CSI
by PiperGrace
Summary: What happens when the demigods are sent to work at a confidential CSI office? Humor, romance, and the crime might even get solved! Contains Percabeth, Leyna, Jasper, Tratie, Frazel, and WillxNyssa I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING EXCEPT THE PLOTLINE AND IDENTIFY. Rated T for some references.
1. In The Beginning

PERCY POV

It was a fairly normal day at the office where I work. Routine is how we operate, even though we didn't realize it. Our receptionist, Hazel, said hi when I walked in and tossed me my keys. I walked through her office and stopped by the lounge to get some coffee.

Nico, just about the quietest guy in the entire building, is always there before me. He leaves out the sugar for me and the creamer for his partner, Thalia. The three of us have grown up together, so it only seems right we would look out for each other. We talk while we make our coffee, then we split up.

After that, I walk through Katie's section to get to mine. A few words about Katie: she is the sweetest, most innocent Southern doll you'll ever meet. Unless you irritate her. Then you'll wish you had never been born. That girl grew up on a ranch in west Texas. I'm willing to bet she can almost bench as much as I can. She can be fun, funny, and sarcastic. But it bugs her when people take things too far. I take an orange Post-It note off of her desk and stick it to her forehead. Katie takes it off, re-sticks it to the rest of the pad, and tries to trip me on my way out.

Katie's partner is so relaxed about everything you'd never picture them as partners. That would be Travis Stoll, the biggest practical joker ever. The only things he takes seriously are family, work, and all relationships: partners, coworkers, girls (especially girls). He irritates Katie to no end, but I think he grows on her a little every day.

I finally make it to my office. But first I have to walk through my partner's section. My partner is Jason Grace: one of the strongest leaders I've ever met. I always mess with him, saying he should have been a politician. I can easily see him as President. He's not driven by females as easily as other guys in our office *cough* Travis and Leo *cough* but I can tell he wants a relationship. He kind of needs one, too. Some levelheaded girl that can keep him steady, but not lovesick or all mushy-brained.

I sit down at my desk and call in an order of doughnuts. Everyone always jokes with me about it, but I don't really care. It's easier and less time wasting than walking all the way across the street to pick them up. It's so much effort. I buzz Frank (chief security guard) about it over the intercom, and he says he'll bring them to the lounge (and hide my blueberry-filled ones). Frank is one of the best friends a guy could ask for.

A few minutes after I sit down, the secretary/strategist/computer geek comes in with ten million folders of stuff for me to go through. The multitasking woman is Annabeth. She is amazing at what she does, and she does a lot. No matter what Travis tells you, I have never in my life called her hot. I said attractive, not hot. There is a difference. Annabeth reminds me of Katie, minus the growing up on a farm and all of the country music. They're both hell on heels (except they don't wear heels if they don't have to).

Annabeth's partner is Piper McLean. She's fairly new to our office, but she's a transfer. She's awesome at her jobs too. Piper is fitting in really well. I can easily see her as a little sister. Piper takes the files after I fill them out and brings them to the lab.

Down in the lab, Will takes the files. He's our science person. For whatever reason he is infatuated with the human body. But other than that he's normal. Except, you know, he was born good looking and has a voice that proves he shouldn't be working in a small Manhattan office.

In our repair room, we have Leo and his partner Nyssa. They are gifted with tools. You can give them a scrap of metal and they'll give you back a stapler. It's crazy.

You may be wondering where exactly we work. Just so you know, this is highly confidential information. Like, no one can know about this. We are a team of America's finest spies and cops.

If you know who I am, you're probably wondering _What kind of idiot let him work at a crime-solving office? _Well, I'm still wondering that. You can look at my records; I'm kind of notorious for being irresponsible. Yet they stuck me in charge of reviewing very important criminal profiles anyway.

The call for the job came out of the blue. I hadn't applied, or done anything special. A week later I was sworn into the job for life and I met my coworkers. They're interesting people, some more than others. Our adventures together are so unbelievable I wouldn't believe them had I not been there.

ANNABETH POV

I clicked the print button on my computer and saved all of the files to my flash drive. I turned the radio on and closed my eyes while I waited on the papers to finish printing. Another day at work. I leaned around the grey divider on my large desk and looked over to Piper.

"Hey, you get a name yet?" Piper shook her head.

"These people don't match any of our descriptions and they fall off the face of the earth after they finish their work. It's creepy." I shrugged and held out a Styrofoam plate to her.

"Kolache?" Piper recoiled.

"Vegetarian for the most part. Have you ever driven past one of those meat processing places? They are disgusting." They are disgusting, but it's what happens. It doesn't bother me.

I turned back around and pulled up _**Identify**_ on my iPad. _**Identify**_ is a special app people like us created to help us locate criminals easier. All you have to do is enter in the key traits of a person and their recent activity and it can locate anyone. It's pretty fun looking people up when it's not for work. Piper slid one of the files to me. I looked at the main page, the blanks filled with Piper's pretty handwriting.

**Profile 01972386**

**Gender: **Female **Approx. Age: ** 19-23 **Height: **5'6-5'8

**Weight: **122 min.** Area: **Black Diamond, FL** Wanted by: **USA, France

I keyed in that information. Millions of hits popped up. I flipped to page 5 of the folder- physical appearance characteristics (PAC): Latina, bronze skin, obsidian eyes, few freckles, no acne, dark black hair, wavy hair, dimples, and a small scar shaped like a letter _C_ under her left ear. We were narrowed down to about 17 women. I flipped through the folder again, looking for unique facts. Finally I reached one: Does almost everything left-handed. I added that to the description. The count went from 17 to 4. One of them was Nyssa because we had been down in Black Diamond last week scoping out the scene. Another one was Hazel, for the same reason. Even though Hazel isn't Latina, she's still dark. That's down to two. Both unlisted. Perfect.

I copied the file and picked up the stack of papers. Right when I opened the door, it went back against me. I almost lost my footing. It was just Percy's partner Jason. I sighed heavily, trying to catch my breath. He held up a hand.

"My bad, Annabeth. Just saying your precious cinnamon doughnuts are going up for auction in five."

My grey eyes narrowed. I could feel them move, which was kind of cool and kind of creepy.

"If they're gone by the time I get down there I will kill you all."

Jason gestured to the mountain of papers in my hands. "Want me to get that for you?"

_Be responsible and don't get doughnuts, or get breakfast_. Eh, what the heck. I do my job 7/7 days a week. I gave him the papers, and he moved out of the way so I could leave. Jason nodded to Piper. Piper smiled back and turned around again.

I made a beeline for the lounge, but I hesitated at the door. Was Jason serious about an auction over my doughnuts? I pressed my ear to the door, which was usually open. Red flag number one.

"That's seventy-five cents for one doughnut; can I get $1.50 for two?" I heard Leo's voice calling out prices and numbers of doughnuts.

"I want three for $2.00." I heard Travis.

"Three for two, can I get four for $3.50?" Leo continued. I opened the door.

"How about I get all five for free because they're mine?"

Will hit the table."God dang it he was serious about telling her."

I took the bag of doughnuts, gave them all a pointed look, and went back to my office. I rolled my eyes. Men can be so immature.

TRAVIS POV

All I wanted was three doughnuts, is that really too much to ask? I left the lounge and went back to my section. Brad Paisley hit my ears immediately. I knocked loudly on our door until Katie turned it down to see what on the earth was interrupting her moment of peace.

"Please turn that hick trash off."

Katie crossed her arms."It is _not_ hick trash. And it's not that ridiculous so-called rap you play."

I feigned hurt. "Katie darling, that is not ridiculous so-called rap! That is my lifeline!"

By then she was just irritated. Probably about the _darling_. Good; I was doing my job. I sat down at my desk and pulled up iFunny. Every now and then I'd laugh and Katie would look up. My technical job is to get inside of the criminal's mind and plan out an entire scheme from within. The only problem is they still haven't found our criminals. So I basically do nothing except get paid. True story.

Katie went on with her business. Eventually iFunny got old, and it went to pictures I have seen millions of times. Literally millions, you have no idea how easily I get bored. I pulled up Microsoft Word and started typing away. What was I doing, you may ask. Easy. I was writing a love letter to Annabeth.

DO NOT FREAK OUT. I don't like her like_**that**_. I signed the letter from Percy and sent it to Katie. She noticed it a few minutes later. I know this because she shot me a strange look before clicking on something. She started reading and scrolling, her green eyes getting bigger by the paragraph. I was really impressed by my work. Then she started laughing. Loudly.

"What?" I asked. Katie scrolled up a little bit.

" 'I have never seen blonde curls as golden as yours. It is as if the sun donated its rays just for your hair because it knew how special you would be.' Really, Travis?"

I shrugged. "And I repeat, what? I think it sounds romantic."

Katie gave me a half-hearted "hahaha".

"I think it's incredibly cheesy. Who took you to go see The Vow?"

The Vow? God no! That is the worst chick flick I have ever seen! And yes, I saw it. That's what I get for promising some teenage cashier anything if she didn't tell her boss I knocked over the crate of onions. And technically I didn't. It was the man-ogre in line in front of me, who rudely and loudly blamed it on me. Apparently I was easy to read, because Katie laughed again.

"You did see it! Even I haven't gone to see it, Travis. Work on your romance. It's pretty sad."

Pick up line idea! "Not as sad as your ex-boyfriend." I replied coolly. Katie gave me a look.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

I leaned back in my chair. "I'd hate to be the guy that had to leave someone as fine as you."

Katie gave me another fake "hahaha". And that time I even got the eye-roll. I'm so super-de-duper-de special, aren't I?

"Did you seriously call me 'fine'? Like I said, work on the romance." She went back to typing.

Just like that. I really shouldn't have cared; it wasn't even a real asker-outer. But still. She resisted getting her piece of this? I made a neutral gesture with my hands.

"Depends, did you seriously just say 'no'?" Katie slid her tongue across her bottom lip and nodded. She grinned and stood up, grabbing her empty coffee cup.

"As a matter of fact yes, yes I did tell you no." She walked out of the room. From the end of the hall, where everyone in the entire freaking building could hear her, she yelled, "THAT MEANS YOU JUST GOT REJECTED TRAVIS!"

"REJECTION!" I heard Leo and Percy yell. Such good friends they are. I replied,

"At least I asked a girl out, Percy! I don't see you in Annabeth's office." Sometimes I felt like I was the only one that could see they were going to happen.

"Because the almighty Percy Jackson is scared of rejection." Annabeth called back. I laughed. That much was obvious.

"Would I get rejected?" Percy asked. I could almost see Piper and Annabeth whispering to each other.

"It depends, who are you asking out?" Piper countered.

Percy didn't respond. Success! I heard the girls high-five each other. The entire office went into an awkward silence for a good minute or two. I went to my music and turned up Whistle by Flo Rida. Just to irritate Katie.

She walked back in and narrowed her eyes at me. I shrugged innocently.

"I like my music, you like yours."

Katie sighed. "Why is it so difficult— "

I cut her off with my hand. "It's not. You just put your lips together and come real close—"

Katie pushed my chest, making me sit back in my chair again.

"You are impossible."

"Thank you, my darling Katie." She shot a rubber band at my head. A token of affection. Score!

**That's all I have so far. Like it? Hate it? Leo will protect me from all flames! (Though for some strange reason I'd like to hear them…) Constructive criticism appreciated. Peace, love, and girl scout cookies.**


	2. Special Delivery

PIPER POV

I'd often wondered what people meant by "Casual Friday". Heck, I hadn't known it even existed until my first Friday at the office. In school it meant you could wear whatever you wanted as long as you were in dress code. But what did it mean in terms of an office? I found out pretty quick.

I hadn't dressed up for work, but I also wasn't showing up in sweatpants and a hoodie. You never knew, especially with that group, what was going on. Casual Friday or no Casual Friday? All I had put on was white jeans and a red shirt. I was wearing black flats and my hair was braided, no biggie.

I realized the second I walked in the door that everyone in the office had their own opinion of what Casual Friday meant.

For Hazel it meant fuzzy pink Hello Kitty pajama pants and a purple shirt. She waved to me as I walked in. I slightly waved back, as I wondered if I would stick out like a sore thumb. I soon found out it was impossible to stick out in a crowd like that.

Thalia's idea of Casual Friday consisted of black jeans with the knees (and most of the rest of the leg) blown out. She also wore a silver tank top. To be honest, Thalia didn't look like anything was wrong. She had her usual If-You-Have-A-Problem-With-Me-Deal-With-It look on her face. She told me hi when I walked past, and I took a spearmint peppermint out of her small glass tray.

Well. I definitely wasn't surprised by most of what I saw. Travis was walking around in an unbuttoned baby pink shirt, with the collar flipped up, and white "shorts" (he swore up and down they were shorts but everyone knew they were boxers— Leo even confirmed it). Nyssa wore a SpongeBob T-shirt and turquoise running shorts. Annabeth, my partner, chose to wear blue jeans and an orange T-shirt.

It had so many signatures scrawled across it I was sure it came from a summer camp of some sort. I couldn't read where it was from, though. Too many Sharpie names were running together. Annabeth seemed really tired when I got to our office. She barely noticed I came in.

"Hey, Annabeth." I greeted her. She grunted in response.

"You tired?"

She picked her head up off of her desk. I saw that the light makeup she usually wore didn't exist. Annabeth rubbed her temples and slouched down in her chair.

"Stayed up so late last night. I swear I had a perfect confirmation on over half of the criminals."

Perfect confirmation? There's no way. Over half? How big is their group?

"What happened?" I pressed, dragging my swivel chair over to her side of the desk.

"I crashed. Literally, I woke up on the floor. I couldn't remember anything important, like for example, where I put all of that data." My eyes grew as big as saucers. "Or any of the names, descriptions, anything. There's very minimal information I remember. It came back to me in a dream a second ago."

"What kind of dream? Tell me!" I scooted my chair over closer to hers. Annabeth yawned.

"I don't know, it was like in ancient Greece or something. The traditional heroes— Jason and Perseus and all of them— they were trying to run this Cyclops out of town. But the thing is, the Cyclops had two eyes."

A two-eyed Cyclops. I was sure Annabeth was going crazy.

"Wouldn't that be an ogre? Did you dream about Shrek?" Annabeth gave me a look. Okay, maybe she wasn't as zombie-fied as I had thought.

"No, it was definitely a Cyclops. But his second eye was kind of faded. You couldn't see it, but I knew it was there for some reason. And there was a crazy stabber on the loose, degutting almost any living thing he could find, and they were blaming the Cyclops for it. But it wasn't the Cyclops."

A dream about the Mad Stabber and Shrek the Cyclops. Yep, she was normal. One thing bothered me though.

"Hey, what all heroes were there?"

Annabeth cracked her knuckles. "That's the thing. They were all really weird and mixed together. There was Helen of Troy, and Katniss, and Rapunzel—"

"Weak and pathetic Rapunzel or frying pan Rapunzel?" I interrupted.

"Frying pan Rapunzel. And there was also Rosa Parks—"

"Black lady who didn't give the white guy her seat?" I interrupted again.

"Yeah, her. There was also a flower girl. She was skipping around dropping flowers like you would at a wedding, but the flowers were explosives. And there was this fire breathing dragon. But it was bronze, and its name was Happy. I don't know why I had a dream about Happy the Dragon, but I did. And there was this one creature I couldn't tell what it was. It kept changing form. Also, there was this shadow. It wasn't a person, just the shadow. Anyway, all of a sudden there was a blinding light. It was fighting a Pegasus."

"The light was fighting a mythical flying horse?" I asked in disbelief.

"Yes, but it wasn't _the_ Pegasus. It was just another Pegasus. And all of a sudden, a grey one and a black one started fighting with the light against the first Pegasus. Perseus was riding the black one, and Jason was on the grey one. And there was this one girl that was throwing weapons at everyone, but the weapons would only kill the monsters. The heroes could easily grab a flying blade and stab the Cyclops with it. And the weirdest thing is it looked to me like Rapunzel and Perseus were dating."

I would have done a spit take had I been drinking coffee.

"Say what now?"

Annabeth nodded eagerly. "I know! And then Flynn from the frying pan Rapunzel's story was dating the lethal flower girl. And Jason and Helen had a thing for each other, but neither one would say anything until Helen got hurt while fighting another villain, who was the ringleader of the whole group. Reinforcements came to help the heroes, so the villains fled. During that, Jason grabbed Helen's weak hand and started muttering something to her. I don't know what it was. Then right when he was about to say something…you came in and woke me up."

She can't be serious. That dream is so random, and it has nothing to do with the case.

"How did that relate to the case at all?" I asked incredulously.

"Easy. The stabber guy is one of our villains. I remembered that much, but that was about it."

I gave Annabeth the look she'd given me earlier. She based a whole dream off of one guy being a stabber? I shook my head and grabbed the Styrofoam plate off of her desk.

"You need a Kolache?"

Annabeth shook her head. "I need cinnamon. If my doughnuts aren't in there, promise me you'll slowly and painfully kill whoever took them."

I laughed at my brain-dead partner. "Will do, Chase."

I got up to retrieve her five cinnamon doughnuts. When I got to the lounge, it was awfully quiet, like everyone was done going in there for the day. That was odd, since usually they're walking in and out all day. I got a sudden craving for Sprite.

I turned and faced the vending machine in the corner. I fished around in all of my pockets for a while before finally scraping up two quarters. I stuck them in the machine and punched the Sprite button. The machine didn't budge. I tapped the button again. Nothing. I shook the vending machine. Finally the Sprite came out. I grabbed Annabeth's doughnuts and a glazed one for myself. When I went to go out the door, I ran into Annabeth.

"You okay? It's been like five minutes." Five minutes had passed?

I waved her off. "Yeah, the vending machine was being stupid, though." Annabeth nodded in understanding. We started talking on our way back to our section, when all of a sudden Hazel called us up front.

"What is it?" Annabeth asked.

"Delivery for you two." Hazel replied.

Annabeth gave me a strange look. "Did you order anything?"

I shook my head. "No."

We walked into the front office. Hazel beamed and gestured to the front table. I couldn't believe my eyes. Two gorgeous bouquets of flowers sat on the desk. Annabeth lifted one of them.

"Roses. My favorites." She smelled the roses and sighed contentedly. I picked up the other one. Lilies of the Valley. Those happened to be my favorite.

"Hazel, who brought these in?" I turned and faced our receptionist.

"The delivery guy. Duh." Hazel tapped her temple with her pointed finger three times.

Annabeth picked a small white card out of her basket. "There's a note."

"Read it." Hazel urged. Annabeth knocked some of the dirt off.

" 'Annabeth, you know me, but you don't know who I am. Through these flowers I hope you understand how I feel for you. I've been told these are your favorite.' And it's signed anonymous."

I also found a card in mine. I read it aloud.

" 'Piper, we haven't known each other long, but I can tell you're special. I hope you like these.' Mine's anonymous, too."

Hazel laughed and hit her desk. "Well I'll be darned, you have secret admirers!"

Annabeth laughed in disbelief. "Well then."

We brought them back to our office and ran into Will on our way.

"Where'd those come from?" He asked.

I shrugged. "We don't know."

Will nodded. "Well they look nice." He kept walking.

Could Will have sent flowers to one of us? Surely not. Annabeth and I were way out of his league, or he was out of ours. Which one it was, I was never certain of.

Obviously someone liked me and Annabeth. Who was it? I asked Annabeth that. She shrugged.

"For all we know these could have come from Perseus and Jason." I laughed at that. The idea that two mythical heroes would send us flowers was ridiculous. It lifted the mood.

When we got back into our office, the printer had finished running off. Great way to kill the mood. I sighed, set the flowers down on my desk, and grabbed my stack. Annabeth did as well.

A good ten minutes passed before Annabeth spoke again.

"You know, Piper, I think I remember something else about the case."

"What is it?" I asked eagerly. I had been finding nothing but dead ends.

"The Cyclops was human sized. I think he's a real criminal in the case, but I pictured him as a Cyclops for whatever reason."

**Like it? Hate it? Happy the Dragon will protect me from flames! Shout out to whoever can find any of my references to the series and name them correctly! *Hint* The people in Annabeth's dream are characters that are/will be in the story. I don't own Hello Kitty, SpongeBob, Shrek, the myths, Rapunzel, Flynn, or explosive flowers. Thank you to my reviewers!**


	3. The Unexpected Occurs

KATIE POV

When I woke up I didn't know what to expect of the day. For some reason I had felt like something special or different was going to happen. I entered the building like usual. Told Hazel good morning and made my coffee. Excuse me, went to make my coffee. My mug wasn't in the dishwasher when I went to retrieve it. Instead I went into my office. Completely expected Travis to say something stupid like, "_Good morning, darling. Sleep well? From where I was sitting it looked like it._"

I however hadn't expected a complete office makeover. Christmas lights of a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors were strung around the room. There was garland wrapped around the legs of the chairs and desks. There was a life-size Frosty in the corner of the room. With his corn cob pipe, button nose, and two eyes made of out coal and everything. A nutmeg Scentsy had been plugged in, and Taylor Swift's Christmas album was softly playing out of Travis's iPad. To top it all off, there was a Charlie Brown Christmas tree sitting on top of our filing cabinet. To say I was speechless was an understatement.

Travis walked in holding his coffee mug—and mine. He set mine down.

"Morning Gardner. Like the makeover?"

I probably looked like a fish out of water. A million thoughts were racing through my mind. _You redecorated our office? You made me coffee? You bought a "hick trash" Christmas album? It looks really nice. _Instead, I said something completely stupid.

"But it's not even Thanksgiving!"

Travis chuckled and set his own mug down. "But no one decorates for Thanksgiving. You decorate for fall, and you skip straight to Christmas. What kind of Thanksgiving songs do they have out, other than the cheesy ones made for preschoolers?"

As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. I took my coffee mug and went to take a sip. Then I remembered I hadn't made it—he had. I set the cup back down.

"'Fess up. What did you do wrong and are trying to butter me up for? Is there arsenic in the coffee or something?"

Travis shook his head. "No. Half filled with coffee, one-fourth milk, and the other fourth French vanilla creamer. Three scoops of sugar. Not fresh out of the pot but not cold. Am I right?"

That's how I'd made my coffee every day since I was four years old and I started drinking my own coffee. From two up I took baby sips out of my dad's thermos or whatever he drank out of. I picked my mug back up and took a small sip. It was fine. Better than I had ever tasted it, in fact.

"So I am right. Relax, you're uptight. It's the holiday season, get in the spirit. I know I am."

Getting in the spirit. Last year to get in the spirit he put fake snow all over our office and put a giant inflatable Santa in the front office where Hazel works. Oh, and he brought iced sugar cookies from Wal*Mart that may or may not have been stolen.

"Come on, let's go get doughnuts. I heard Percy telling Frank they were coming." Travis held the door open for me. Such a gentleman all of a sudden. I knew a trick had to be coming soon. He probably hid all of my doughnuts and was going to make me pay for them, and then hide the money all over the building. Or maybe there was a trip wire. Or a bucket of fake snow at the lounge door. That was what I had expected.

Of course, I had not expected what happened next. As I passed underneath the doorway, Travis took one of my hands and kissed my cheek. My heart stopped beating momentarily. My senses finally returned and I managed to pull away.

"What was that?" I asked. Had he lost his mind?

"Getting in the spirit. I told you I was." Travis pointed to the doorway. I looked up and saw the cursed plant—mistletoe.

"Where'd you even get that?" I started admiring the plant.

"I didn't. I swear when I did all of that the mistletoe wasn't a part of my doing."

Then why on earth…so much confusion. I pushed past him, went to the lounge, and grabbed my doughnuts. My mind was racing.

_Oh my god. Did that really just happen? Surely it didn't. He's not like that. Our relationship is too complicated for things like that. _My sensible side was talking to me. All of a sudden another side came out. _Are you kidding, Katie? You know you loved it. People change; who says he can't be like that? And what relationship? As coworkers? Please, you want more and you know it._ That side startled me. I hadn't been expecting that, much like what had happened.

My sensible side came back. _Yeah, well that's all he probably sees me as. And that's all I see him as! This is the same guy who yesterday made a joke about offensive novelty rap, putting me in place of some easy girl! _And it was overruled again. _But you liked the fact that he noticed you. You like being messed with. It makes you happy when he picks on you over other girls. _My sensible side stopped being sensible. _Besides, you do get jealous when it's not you he's talking to about casual things. And you appreciate that you weren't just a weekend fling, or aren't one currently. _

I shook my head, trying to get the little voices to stop talking. I was going insane.

All of a sudden Frank called an emergency meeting in the lounge. Emergency meetings were only called when something serious happened. Since he was the chief security guard, I could only guess at what had happened. When we were all in there, Frank played a message off of our answering machine.

"Hello, this is Rachel Dare, William Dare's daughter. I've been receiving threats by text, email, FaceBook, Tumblr, Twitter, InstaGram, you name it someone says they'll kill me. I don't know how an unlisted number got my number, or any of my account names. Earlier today my FaceBook account was hacked into, and someone published a suicide note on my status. Please help me get through this."

It wasn't very surprising that someone would target Rachel Dare. She was pretty, famous, and filthy rich. Before I could register what was happening, the phone was in my hand and I pressed the "redial" button. Rachel answered the phone.

"Hello?" It occurred to me about ten seconds later she anticipated a reply.

"Hello Ms. Dare, I'm Katie Gardner. You called our office about some serious business."

"Rachel, please. And yes I did. This has been going on for weeks now. No one wants to hang around me anymore because of the things being posted. They think if someone's out to get me they'll be targeted next."

"Well Rachel I can assure you we'll figure this case out. When can we look at the evidence?"

"I don't have any plans today. Is that alright with you?"

I pulled out my pocket calendar. "My schedule is clear. I'll be over soon."

"Thank you. Goodbye."

"Goodbye." I hung the phone up. My coworkers gave me an insane look. I shrugged. "What? She needs help and I volunteered to do it."

"Yeah, but she's _Rachel Dare_." Leo emphasized her name. I scoffed.

"So? Being filthy rich doesn't mean you don't have problems."

"So when do we head out?" Travis asked. I froze. _Crap_. He's my partner, and partners investigate together. There is no way I want to be alone with him right now! Not while I'm hormonal and all that jazz. Thalia must have noticed that look.

"I'll just go with her. The last thing a girl wants during a crisis is any guy showing up. You don't know our species that well," Thalia joked.

I was expecting Travis to protest, but things weren't exactly going as I had planned.

"Okay, fine. Have fun."

Another thing I didn't expect. Thalia and I headed out for one of our company cars: a silver Mustang Thalia has claim on.

Once we were in the car Thalia wasted no time getting down to business. "What's up with you and Travis?"

I confessed everything that had happened in the past hour. Thalia listened intently.

"I just don't know what I should do. I mean, things are weird all of a sudden."

"I say forget it all. I don't bother with guys, no matter who they are, and I'm perfectly happy all the time."

Thalia had her point. I wasn't sure that would work for me though.

After we passed security at Dare Manor, Rachel met us at the door.

When you think of a rich girl, you'll picture a collared shirt, a pleated skirt, white stockings, black shoes, and glasses. Of course that's not how Rachel was. Nothing is how I expected anymore.

Rachel was wearing black Nike shorts and a tie-dye T-shirt. Her curly red hair was down and it looked like she had just woken up. She greeted Thalia and me.

"I'm Rachel. And you are?"

"I'm Katie. We spoke briefly on the phone. This is my partner, Thalia."

"It's nice to meet you. Thank you for your help."

"Anytime, Ms. Dare. Can we see your computer and/or electronics?" Thalia asked. Rachel nodded and guided us down a series of corridors. We finally stopped once we reached her bedroom. I didn't pay much attention to her décor; we were there for serious business.

Rachel pulled up several Internet icons and signed into various accounts on each one. She showed us her FaceBook first. The suicide note had gotten almost thirty likes and several comments.

It was sad to see all of these people Rachel had once trusted bash her. Cussing her out, calling her a prissy rich girl, her boyfriend even broke up with her. It was pathetic. Rachel pointed to one of the comments.

"This is the girl who was supposed to be in my group for a writing project. She got her parents to call the teacher and complain. So now I'm in a group with one other girl who's backing me up. She's the reason I'm staying strong." Rachel showed us the nice girl's profile: Reyna Gonzales.

For the next three hours we went through all of the websites Rachel's enlisted under, interviewed Rachel, did some research on all of her friends/followers/etc., and got some names and addresses. I yawned and stretched. It was 7:38 according to Rachel's computer.

"It's gonna take a while to go through all of this. If we really pressed hard and tried to get somewhere this could take us another five hours. That's not counting snacking, potty breaks, and other things." I announced. Thalia sighed in frustration.

"Maybe longer. I can't get into this account." She was currently trying to hack into six of Rachel's InstaGram followers' personal accounts to try and find another lead. So far no luck. "I need Annabeth! She's the only one good with computers and stuff like this."

"She and Hazel could figure it out in ten minutes flat." I agreed.

"But then Annabeth would have to bring Piper because she's her partner, and Hazel would substitute Will for Katie so he wouldn't feel awkward." Thalia continued. I cracked a grin.

"That's half the office right there."

"Well then how about a sleepover?" Rachel suggested. I had almost forgotten she was there. A sleepover to solve crime. Six witnesses to anything anyone posts. I liked the sound of it.

"Do you mind?" I asked. Rachel waved me off.

"Not at all. I have people over all of the time. Daddy's in Europe right now anyway."

"It sounds like a plan." Thalia nodded, and she started smirking like she had ten million evil things racing through her mind.

"We'll go back to the office and tell the other girls. We can be back at around 8:15. Does that work for you?" I asked Rachel. Rachel nodded.

"That's perfect. I can definitely do that."

"Alright then." Thalia stood up. I followed her example. We told Rachel goodbye and left Dare Manor. When we returned to the office with an invitation to a sleepover, the girls were more than excited. We told the guys all of our plans, promised them we would be armed, and told them goodbye. At 8:15 exactly we showed up at Dare Manor. It was time for a crime solving sleepover.

**How was that? It could be better, I know. Action will be coming soon, for Jove99. Also, shout out to my awesome cousin. She'll probably join FF within the next week or so. If you have any recommendations for her (or me!) to read, just put it in a review or PM me. **

**Thank you to the authors supporting me: Create-Write-Inspire and Random Person With No Name. You two are awesome. I highly recommend their work, and once again thank you for your help!**


	4. A Night In The Lab

Thalia POV

A sleepover. I hadn't been to a sleepover in ages. What did girls our age even do at a sleepover? Luckily for me my arrival was going to be late, so I would get to miss the awkward meetings. When Annabeth and I returned to the office there was a large stack of papers on my desk that had to be turned into the CIA by midnight.

By the time even nine o'clock rolled around Will and I were the only ones left at the office. All of the girls had headed out, and the guys finished their work. Will wanted to look at something in a corpse's veins for a while. Neither of really wanted to be separated; there's safety in numbers, after all. So I grabbed the stack of papers and a pen, and joined him in his large office downstairs.

To be honest I had never been down the stairs of our office until that night. I never really knew what to expect, and the idea of an underground office was kind of gross. The office was actually very organized. There was one huge table that went around the perimeter of the room along the wall. The only places it stopped had filing cabinets to fill the gaps. Everywhere under the base was several cabinets, so it was a two-in-one device. There was a table that was at least seven feet long lying in the middle of the room, sort of like an operation table. There wasn't any loose paper or clutter anywhere. The needles and probes and such were all resting in organized tubes full of sterilizer. A single microscope was on a desk next to the seven foot table. Will's stool was set by the desk. And there were plenty of lights.

"Nice place," I commented. Will pointed to a small black container I hadn't noticed before.

"There's water and some sodas in the mini fridge, if you get thirsty. Avoid clear containers and you'll be fine."

I nodded and opened the fridge. It was actually bigger than I'd expected it to be. I grabbed a diet Coke and shut the mini fridge. I began my work.

Going through the stack of papers was a tedious task. I had to guess or write N/A on some of the blanks. Finally I got to _the last_ _one_ _on the last freaking page_ I had no idea what to put for, but it had an asterisk next to it, so I had to fill it out.

"Will, what's a tetrodotoxin?"

"A type of neurotoxin."

_A type of neurotoxin_. Like I'm supposed to know what that means.

"And tell me, Mr. Will Nye The Science Guy, what is a neurotoxin?"

"Brain poisoning."

Way to be helpful, Solace. "So what's a tetrodotoxin?"

"A poison that makes its way through the body, slowly making all nerves go numb."

"Oh. Have we had any cases like that recently? Or ever?"

Will shook his head. "Not that I know of. How is it worded in the paper?"

I looked back down to the stack of files. So close.

"'Name an example of how someone can be diagnosed with a tetrodotoxin.'"

"Well I'm not sure if that's possible. Tetrodotoxins are found in puffer fish."

A disease found in fish? How the heck could a person get it then? Was that a trick question, simply meant to test my knowledge? I suddenly had a flashback.

_Percy, Nico, and I had gone out to eat to celebrate Nico's birthday. We took him to a new seafood place in town called _Fish City_. Percy and I had never really liked seafood (I preferred sushi while Percy stayed away from it completely) but we were going to make Nico's night special. I ordered the closest thing to sushi they had to offer, and Percy said he would just eat off of my plate. Nico made a comment about how his food tasted funny and wanted to try some of mine. He took the last bite off of my plate and frowned. Apparently the food there was terrible He had only taken two bites total, one out of mine and one out of his, but I trusted the little guy. I, in an outrage, told the waiter the food was unsatisfactory and that we would not be paying for our meals. Instead we ordered Nico a pizza and took him to see a movie. For the next two weeks Percy and I were puking our guts out because the fish I'd ordered hadn't been drained of the poison properly. We reported it to the police. _Fish City _closed down. _

"Wait, Will. Is it possible to obtain a tetrodotoxin from eating a puffer fish?"

Will shrugged. "I don't see why anyone would eat a puffer fish, but I guess so."

I smiled victoriously and filled in the blank. I was done. I scanned the documents and sent them to my supervisor. Done with an hour to spare. I walked over to Will, who had a puzzled look on his face.

"What's up?"

"I just don't understand it. They said this guy had all of the symptoms of a heart attack, but it wasn't one. Any doctor or aspiring doctor can tell you what an attacked heart looks like. This one is perfectly healthy, except for the black vein right here in the heart." Will showed me the black vein. I did my best not to puke.

"I can't figure out for the life of me why that one vein is black."

"Did you go through all of the body systems yet?"

"No. I still haven't gone through the brain yet." Maybe the seafood poison was still around, but I had a crazy thought.

"Check the brain. I'm willing to bet money the black vein starts there."

Will carefully started examining the brain. It was absolutely disgusting, but I was right. The black vein started at the brain and carried all the way throughout the heart. Upon a quick look at about five other veins, there were little black dots lining them.

"So it _is_ poison!" Will said triumphantly.

"Good, I guess."

Will shook his head. "You don't get it, Thalia. Maybe it's fate that was the question on your files, but I'm almost positive this guy died of a tetrodotoxin. His ex-fiancée says his last meal was seafood. It had a fair chance at being a puffer fish."

"What kind of a person eats puffer fish?" I scowled.

"Apparently he did. This really narrows down the case."

I got excited too. "And that means all we have to do now is locate someone with easy access to puffer fish and question the restaurant. Case closed!"

We briefly and awkwardly hugged. It meant absolutely nothing other than celebration.

Then the chaos started. Upstairs we heard glass shatter. I'm pretty sure I looked like a deer in the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler. Will put a finger to his lips. We quietly crept up the stairs.

From what I could tell there were two invaders. All of the glass from the front window was busted out. Someone was in Percy and Jason's office. No one breaks into my brother's office and escapes without facing my wrath. Will pulled me into Annabeth and Piper's office. We each took one of their emergency daggers and crouched down. From their voices I could tell it was a girl and a guy. The girl was probably at a higher rank than him, judging by the tone of her voice.

"You find anything?" She asked.

"Nah. These guys probably don't have anything on us anyway. Even if they did, we could take them. I could take them. All of them, with a hand tied behind my back."

"Says the guy with an eye missing."

It took all of my willpower not to laugh. She so got him. I would have congratulated her, had they not been highly wanted criminals.

"Hey! Not cool."

"I'm sorry; did I ruin your pride?" She mockingly asked.

"Shut up. Come on, let's check that other office." I heard footsteps toward the door.

"You coming or what?"

"I used to know him. We were best friends until he moved here."

"Ooh, is someone in love?"

"Shut up. Not one word about this and no one has to find out about your nonexistent pride."

"Deal. Now come on." The guy insisted. The two of them disappeared into the lounge.

"You stay here. I'm going to Leo and Nyssa's office. More coverage." Will whispered to me.

"Okay." I whispered back. Will dashed across the hall just in time.

"Do you have any idea of how long those doughnuts have been sitting out?" The girl had a tone of disgust.

"It was good!" The guy defended.

"Whatever. You go in there, I'll take this one."

I realized the girl was sending her companion to Leo and Nyssa's office and she was about to come into the one I was hiding in. I ducked under Piper's desk just as the girl walked in. She observed the room and picked up something off of Piper's desk. The girl threw it on the floor and it skidded under the desk with me. It was Piper's name plate. I heard a cry of pain coming from Leo's office.

"Help me!" The male intruder cried out. The girl turned her back on me.

"Did you staple your finger to his desk _again_?"

_Again? _How many times had they broken in?

"HELP!" The girl sighed and began walking forward. Just my chance. I jumped up and pounced on her.

"What the—" I punched the side of her head.

She apparently wasn't fazed. The girl whirled around and went for my stomach. Her fist made impact with my side because I turned. I grunted and kicked her square in the chest. The girl almost lost her footing. Almost. She reared back and threw a punch at my face. She hit my cheek because once again I turned. My face went numb. I shook my head, trying to regain my vision. To make up for my lost time, I sent a wild punch. There was a sickening crack as she howled. I had probably hit her nose. When my vision returned I discovered I was right. She didn't bother to try and stop the bleeding though. She had a fight to fight.

Across the hall I could see Will fighting the male intruder. I saw a small gleam of silver land in a desk. The dagger! I picked it up and slashed at her arm. It cut her sleeve, but probably no more. We started fighting for the knife. She managed to twist my arm and pin it behind my back. I grimaced and swore at her. She disarmed me and threw the knife into the wall. When I heard it stick I knew it was beyond rescue.

"GET OUT!" I roared at the girl.

"Not a chance!" She argued.

I tripped her, and she took me down with her. We began rolling on the floor, fighting over each other. I heard a few solid punches from the other office. I re-hit her nose when I was on top. She hissed and pushed me off of her. She took out her own dagger and began slashing at me. She got my left shin when I went to kick her. I stumbled and grabbed onto her shoulders. She bucked me off, but I latched onto her ankle. She tripped and hit her head against the desk. That probably screwed up her senses. She picked up Piper's name plate she had dropped and chunked it at my head. It hit my stomach instead. I doubled over in pain. She scrambled out into the hall.

"Let's go!" She snapped at her fellow intruder. He came staggering out of Nyssa's office moments later. The two of them made out into the night. I coughed up some blood.

"Will." I weakly called.

"In here." Was his reply. Leo and Nyssa's workshop was bloody. Will was resting in Leo's swivel chair, his eyes closed.

"That was awful." I moaned.

"Agreed." His eyes suddenly shot open. "Oh God, what if they actually got something?"

"I'm sure they didn't." I reassured him. I was mostly trying to reassure myself. Will didn't look at ease, though.

"Promise me after we get cleaned up you'll go to that slumber party. Please."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Promise me."

I raised my hands in surrender. "I promise."

"Good." We went back to the lab, bandaged ourselves up, and I went to Rachel Dare's house.

Katie answered the door. "Oh my god, what happened to you?" She pulled me into what I recognized as Rachel's bedroom. The others gasped at my appearance.

"What?" I asked, pretending I was normal.

"Your clothes are coated in blood and there's a huge gash on your leg. What happened at the office?" Hazel demanded.

"Me and Will got into a fight with some intruders. They were digging around in Percy and Jason's office. We attacked them, but they ran away. Sorry about your offices, Nyssa, Annabeth, and Piper. They're kind of messed up."

"I really don't care right now. Thalia, you're hurt." Piper said, sounding guilty.

"Yeah, and Will also said no one would be able to notice I'd been in a fight. I'm fine, really."

"Did you find out anything?" Katie asked.

"Yeah. One of the guys that broke in only had one eye."

"Annabeth—" Piper started, but Annabeth waved her off.

"I know, Piper. Are you really okay, Thalia?" I nodded.

"Yeah, I got this. What have you guys found out?"

Hazel pulled up a document on Rachel's computer. "We have a bunch of phone numbers and addresses. We added account information to each person's official file."

The names all started running together. Izzi Montagne's number could have started with 319, and her Tumblr could have been FluffyPandas1357924680. I'll never know. I don't even know who Izzi Montagne is! One of Rachel's ex-friends obviously, but still.

Rachel brought me a few slices of pizza and a bottle of water. I remembered my half-empty can of diet Coke still down in Will's lab. It would be flat by the time I could get to it again.

"You don't have to do this, Thalia. It's obvious you have your own problems. I shouldn't burden you with mine."

I waved Rachel off. What's with everyone feeling sorry for me?

"It's no problem. It's what I do."

Rachel bit her bottom lip. "You know what? No. I've been telling you guys all about my issues but there's nothing I can do for you in return. Money will eventually run out. What's going on in your lives?"

We were hesitant at first. Katie sighed.

"Well my partner kissed me today and acted like it was nothing."

"HE DID WHAT?" Piper shrieked. Katie nodded and spilled the whole story.

Then Annabeth told about the Percy Saga, and Piper refused to tell us anything about her romance life. She said she would have to kill us if she told us. She only said that she had never had a boyfriend and was falling hard for someone currently.

That was how my night went. I guess at sleepovers you gossip and do un-girly stuff like drink sodas straight out of the 2-liter bottle. I remembered something.

"Oh, and the girl said she either knew Percy or Jason. I was hiding so I couldn't tell who she meant."

Annabeth took out her phone. She began dialing a number.

"Alright Jackson. Time to tell all."

**There's your action, Jove99. Any couple requests or scene requests? Tell me, I'll see what I can do. R&R! I don't own anything except the plotline. Tetrodotoxins ARE real! You can look them up if you don't believe me! Fixing to eat Ramen noodles. Peace out!**


	5. ABC: Advice, Breaking In, Caught

Leo POV

From the damage done it looked like it was a fairly decent fight. I couldn't find anything missing and neither could Nyssa. Thalia scared the girl off too quickly for her to snatch anything from Piper and Annabeth's office. What could they have wanted? The only thing of worth I have in my office is a bowl of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and Fun-Yuns. Unless you looked under the floorboards of my workbench. Then you'd find my stash of highly important blueprints and files, but it's not like that would matter to criminals. Right?

I did some research of my own on the Dare case. It turned out Rachel had a good looking—I mean good friend who stood by her no matter the consequences. Her name was Reyna Gonzales. I told Nyssa about my discoveries, but she simply rolled her eyes.

"Honestly Leo, you probably analyzed her profile picture more than the actual case."

Girls already knew they were always right, so I didn't bother to argue with her.

Our head director was coming to check up on us, make sure we weren't screwing things up, stuff like that. His identity was so confidential no one in our office knew who he actually was. We started calling him Mr. Director, but it quickly got shortened to Mr. D.

No one knew the exact time he would be coming, so we were frantically trying to clean up and make the office look decent. Finally we reached a point where we had to make ourselves stop. That point was when Annabeth stuck a Scentsy in every single room and straightened any loose files.

We were all quiet, waiting on Hazel's cue that he had arrived. We had a whole routine worked out just to impress him. And a backup routine. And a backup routine for the backup routine. Annabeth always had a plan.

I opened a bag of Flamin' Hot Fun-Yuns and began munching on them. Nyssa rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath. We finally heard Hazel.

"Good morning, Mr. D."

"Bah, it's too early to call it a good morning Hermione." Good old Mr. D. He's such a charmer.

"It's Hazel, sir. Hermione was in Harry Potter—"

"Of course she was. Where are your coworkers?"

"Why, they're at work where they should be. You can go see if you wish."

That was our cue. Nyssa and I jumped up and pulled out a blueprint or two, along with one of our projects. Mr. D. stopped at our door.

"Hi, Mr. D!" Nyssa greeted him. Mr. D. snorted.

"Hello Nicole, Loki."

"It's Nyssa and Leo." I corrected.

Mr. D. waved me off. "What are you working on there?"

"This is a new GPS tracker-slash-bug. You simply have to discreetly attach it to your subject and activate the motion sensor. Then you—"

Mr. D. cut off Nyssa's presentation. "I'm sure it's fabulous, Natasha. But my job isn't to listen to you drone on and on over things I don't care to understand."

Mr. D. continued to Piper and Annabeth's office. Nyssa and I bumped fists. A two minute riddance. A new record for us!

The funniest moment with Mr. D. was when he got to Percy and Jason. Apparently Mr. D. had gotten their initials mixed up, and ended up calling Percy Peter Griffin. Percy's expression was priceless. Jason corrected Mr. D. and ruined it, though. And then Mr. D. went down to Will's lab and loudly questioned why there was no wine in there. Wine is apparently an important connection to the soul, and diet Coke just wouldn't cut it. Finally Mr. D. left, taking our biscuits and grape jelly with him.

"I paid for that jelly." I heard Percy grumble. I smirked and Nyssa rolled her eyes.

"Hey Peter, at least he didn't take the cool hwip!"

"COOL WHIP!" Percy yelled back.

"Cool hwip." I repeated just to irritate him.

"Shut up Stewie." Percy commanded.

"I'm not Stewie." I clarified. Percy threw his hands in the air.

"And I'm not Peter Griffin! Do I look like some racist pot-bellied maniac to you?"

"Depends, who're you asking?" Travis retorted. Percy didn't answer. He did that a lot when he couldn't come up with good comebacks. It got quiet in our office until I started singing.

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas—"

"LEO SHUT UP!" Piper yelled.

I shut up. There was a knock on our door. It was Will.

"Hey, can I borrow Nyssa for a second?"

"Sure," I replied. Nyssa bumped my shoulder.

"Try and actually get something done while I'm gone."

"No promises!" I cheerfully chirped back. Nyssa huffed and walked away.

I picked up four rubber bands and started fiddling with them and a few paper clips. After about five minutes I had made a dog. Then it occurred to me that Nyssa would be back at any second and would see that I hadn't done anything progressive, whatever that means. I went back to the blueprints and started gearing together the GPS. I tried to read Nyssa's handwriting to see which plug I connected next, but the ink was slightly smudged. I couldn't read it.

I went around and asked every person in the office besides Will and Nyssa if they could read it. No luck. Katie thought it said "peaches", Jason thought it said "elephant", and Frank thought it said "bingo". Yeah, I doubted I was supposed to connect the wire to an elephant.

I had no choice but to cave in and ask Nyssa. That seriously damaged my pride. I couldn't figure it out on my own, and _then_ I had to ask a girl for help? That was not very macho on my half.

I re-hid the blueprints and closed up the floorboards. When I tried the handle of the lab door, it was locked. It usually wasn't locked. I went up to go ask Hazel for another lab key. Hazel dug through her files and frowned. Then she started rummaging through a cabinet. Hazel snapped.

"Will left his key at home, so I gave him the only spare. Sorry, Leo." Hazel shrugged.

"It's fine; I can just pick the lock or something. Thanks anyway." I started to walk off.

"Leo? Can I ask you something kind of personal?"

I turned around at the sound of Hazel's voice. "Like what?"

Hazel clasped her hands together and held them out at arm's length, like she was uncomfortable about asking me whatever it was.

"How do you show someone you like them?" Hazel blurted. I busted out laughing. Hazel looked down. "Sorry, it was a stupid question."

I realized she thought I was laughing at her. "Oh, no, sorry. I wasn't laughing at you. But why would you ask me about relationships?"

"I don't know. You seem like somewhat of an expert on this type of thing."

I shook my head. "Definitely not." Hazel looked thoroughly confused.

"But you're always around girls. You have to know some way to show affection."

I shrugged, and then clapped my own hands together. "I do know some ways."

"Tell me." Hazel eagerly pleaded. I leaned on her desk.

"Well, pickup lines might work." Judging by Hazel's expression I could tell she wouldn't be using any pickup lines. "Find a common interest. Something the both of you enjoy."

"A common interest." Hazel repeated.

"Well yeah, why not? Books, movies, ice skating, throwing Reese's Cups at pigeons, I don't know. Something you enjoy that you know they'll enjoy as well."

"Okay. What else?" Hazel asked.

"Treats every now and then. Leave an anonymous bowl of Hershey's Kisses on Mondays or something."

Hazel nodded. "Okay. Thanks, Leo."

"No problem. Hey, just out of curiosity who is it?"

"If I told you I'd have to kill you." Hazel cracked a smile.

I nodded in understanding. "One of those secret relationships. I get it. Later."

I returned to my office and began looking over the Dare case again. It seemed like an ordinary case of cyberbullying to me. Except, you know, the victim was so rich she probably bathed in hundred dollar bills morning and night. The entire case seemed simple. Fine everyone who had threatened Rachel, and voila. Case closed. But obviously it wasn't that easy. Oh no, heaven forbid Leo could actually solve a case on his own. No, everyone else in the office was dead-set on the idea that the two cases were connected. An actual murder and murder threats didn't necessarily have to be linked, but my coworkers were stubborn. I guess they were right about it.

I looked up and saw my Flamin' Hot Fun-Yuns. Score! I started eating out of the bag again. When I reached the bottom of the bag, my mouth was on fire. I waterfalled Nyssa's water bottle and re-closed it. Then I remembered her words: "Try and get something done."

I started fiddling with the GPS-slash-bug-tracker device thingy. We still needed an official title for it. I finally finished both halves of it and tested it. The only thing left was to connect them. The problem with that was I needed Nyssa to read me her illegible, smeared, inky handwriting. The only problem with that was that Nyssa still had failed to return.

She was still in the lab with Will. Stupid ADD made me forget the entire reason I had went to talk to Hazel. I had needed a spare key because the lab was locked.

I went downstairs again and tried the handle. It was still locked. I jiggled the handle a few more times. I had no luck. Then again, since when have I had good luck? I needed a spare key desperately. I returned to Hazel's office.

"Are you sure there's no spare key I can borrow? Or a skeleton key I can use, just real quick?"

"Leo we've had this conversation. There are no spare keys you can use because Will took the only ones."

"Wait; the only one_s_? The only key_s_? As in plural? Not one key, but more than one?"

Hazel nodded slowly. She emphasized every word as if she were speaking to a baby. "Yes Leo. There was more than one key, and Will asked if he could see all of them. 'All of them' means more than one, so it is plural. There is no key for you to use. I'm sorry."

I sighed and then slumped my shoulders. "Fine then, Hazel. Be that way. I guess I'll have no choice but to break into the lab like a thief in the night."

Hazel crossed her arms. "Isn't that what you said you were going to do the first time?"

I could feel my face flush. My hands got hot, like they always did when I felt any emotion when all of the attention was on me.

"Maybe. Or maybe not. You might be hearing things. Have you ever considered that you're mentally insane, Hazel Levesque?"

Hazel shook her head and threw her hands in the air.

"You are very confusing, Leo Valdez."

I dramatically bowed. "Thank you, and good day."

I went back to the lab and picked the lock with a screwdriver. I opened the door and nearly dropped my screwdriver.

Nothing was wrong except for a few details. Nyssa was sitting on a counter, dangling her legs off of the edge. Will was standing in front of her, seemingly trying to grab something behind Nyssa. That was one of the details. He was trying to grab his other hand. Another detail would be the fact that Nyssa's hands were locked in a similar way around his neck. A big detail would be that their eyes were closed.

The biggest detail was that their lips were locked.

**Someone requested that pairing, so there you have it! Personally I love that couple. It may seem to kind of ramble at the beginning, but like Leo said, you have to factor in his ADD. He forgets things easily and moves onto other things until he remembers. That's what my ADD does anyway. **

**You guys are amazing! I have gotten more reviews, follows, and favorites than I ever thought this story would. Thank you so much. I love you guys.**

**Check out my other story called Slipped Away. If you like Nyssa, you'll like that story. R&R!**


	6. The Dark Side, Dating, and Dare Manor

Unknown POV

"Did your mission go as planned?"

I shook my head. "No."

"You insufferable fool! And what excuse have you brought me this time?"

I gulped. "They were still there. They attacked us. We didn't have a chance to look for the files."

My mistress seemed to be contemplating that. "Do they know your identities?"

"No mistress. She did a good job of acting like the other one. A mastermind of disguise."

My mistress went silent. That usually wasn't good.

"Tell me something, my new recruit. Who were your attackers?"

"The punk girl and their scientist."

My mistress scowled. "The insolent Thalia Grace. She has questioned my authority for years. Another thing."

"Anything for you, mistress." Considering how deep in trouble I was, I needed to butter her up.

"What is important to them? The most important things are what we want."

"I don't know about the scientist, but Thalia has a brother that works there."

Mistress laughed. "Well, well, well. Thalia and Jason Grace, reunited and trying to stop me once and for all. As if that will happen. A brother will do me no good. I need a weak female."

"What about her friend? The blonde one? Everyone knows blondes are ignorant."

Mistress waved me off. "Not that one. That one's a fireball. We need a different one."

I remembered the girl's office I had gone into. "The girl looked scrawny. I don't know if she and Thalia are connected at all, but a missing coworker should shake them up."

Mistress nodded. "She'll do. Find another weakling connected to the Graces. Report back to me as soon as you locate her."

I bowed. "Yes, mistress." I scrambled to leave.

A weak girl connected to the Graces. I pulled up the link to their security cameras on my laptop and watched what had gone on while I was in my meeting.

I soon learned from the black and white films that my first target was a girl named Nyssa. I also learned that she and the scientist (whom is apparently named Will) had been secretly together for the past two months. And Nyssa's partner Leo just figured it out. Nyssa became the _perfect_ target.

Also I figured out something interesting. Percy and Annabeth like each other. Neither of them are afraid to say it. But he still won't ask her out. The bugs we planted on Thalia picked up that she doesn't really do romance. Nyssa and Will are already together. Travis and Katie…the tension between them couldn't even be cut with a knife. Leo is destined to be forever alone. That much is obvious. The secretary girl, Hazel obviously isn't into him. They're too much alike for it to work out. Her other two options would be Jason or Frank. I asked my partner, the one who broke into their office with me, about it.

"I can't see her with Jason. He's such a leader and she's so stubborn they'd clash. That's why they're not partners."

"So can you see her with the other one?" I asked. She pulled up his profile.

"According to this Frank is the chief security guard. If she really is impulsive and stubborn she could use a defensive brick wall. I guess it could work."

That left Jason and their new girl—Piper.

I frowned. "I thought she was just an intern."

My partner hit the back of my head. "Do you really think they allow interns at those places?"

Evidently not. Knowing the people they work with, they'd keep pressing the two of them until they get together. There laid the perfect plan.

"So do we wait on them to get together before we go for Nyssa and Piper?"

My partner shrugged. "I don't think it needs to be very official. Just stable. Sort of like a two-legged table. If one goes missing, the whole thing collapses. And when he collapses, Thalia goes on a rampage. She makes the whole office tense and no one wants to point out anything. The girls give us information; we wipe their memories and set them out on the streets. No one hears from them again. They'll be putty in our hands."

I nodded in approval. "That definitely works. Now what do we need to do?"

My partner crossed her arms. "Isn't it obvious? We wait on them to get together."

"But how do we make sure they get together? Wait; that was a stupid question. They'll go see Breaking Dawn Part II or something."

"Piper hates Twilight. You obviously don't watch them as much as I do. But what if an opportunity were to arise?"

My partner had an evil glint in her eyes. She was almost as bad as our mistress.

Piper POV

A small paper square landed on my desk. I looked up and saw Annabeth, who had her arms crossed and a smile tugging at her lips. I looked down to the paper. It was crème colored and there was white lace around the border. Brown letters were swirled into a loopy font I had trouble reading. My stupid dyslexia was acting up.

"A wedding invitation?" I asked. Annabeth nodded.

"It's Frank's partner, Grover."

"Frank has a partner?" I asked in disbelief. I had always assumed he didn't. Annabeth nodded.

"Yeah. He's an old friend of ours, but he hasn't been here for a while because he's been on a private mission. When he gets back they're having the wedding."

"That's awesome. But clearly this invitation is for you. I don't even know him."

Annabeth pointed to a small section of the paper and read it out loud. "'Dear friends, family, and coworkers: You are cordially invited to the wedding of Grover Underwood and Juniper Ivy Busche.' You are included in 'coworkers'."

I sighed. How could I get out of this? An idea came to mind.

"I don't have a date. It would look tacky for me to show up at a wedding single."

Annabeth shrugged. "So we do a double-partner date."

Her words finally sunk into my brain. "You're going with Percy? That's awesome!"

Annabeth smiled triumphantly. "What's even more awesome is that you just agreed to the date."

Apparently her words didn't get through my head all the way.

"What? No! I'm not—" I spluttered. Annabeth shook her head, her smile growing. "You set me up!" I protested.

"And you took the bait. What's the harm in that?"

I sighed. I couldn't believe her mentality. Annabeth's grin grew even more.

"I'm messing with you. It's not a double date."

This time I over-processed her words. "So you _are_ going with Percy!"

Annabeth blushed. "And? You can't tell me you didn't like the idea of going with Jason."

I crossed my arms. "Actually I can tell you that."

Annabeth and I had a stare off for about thirty seconds. Finally she rolled her eyes.

"I'm going to get some more coffee. You wear me out, McLean."

Annabeth walked out of our office. I sighed and leaned back in my seat.

"I could tell you I didn't like that idea, but I'd be lying." I muttered to myself.

There was a knock on our office door. To top off our conversation, it was Jason himself.

"Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?"

I nodded slowly. If I showed any sign of hesitation Jason didn't notice.

"Did Percy show you the invite?" I asked, casually trying to make conversation.

"Yeah, he did. Actually that's what I came to talk to you about."

I held up a hand as a motion for him to stop talking. I walked over to my door.

"Hey everyone, did you hear Percy finally asked Annabeth out?"

"He did what now?" I heard Hazel ask. The gossip and chaos started. I shut the door to our office, a smile on my face. I sat back down and motioned for Jason to do the same. He obliged.

"You were saying?" I motioned for him to continue.

"I was thinking about the whole wedding thing. The night you girls went to Rachel's, we guys also got together for a few hours. It was pretty obvious how it was going to balance out when Percy found the invitation in the mailbox. He would take Annabeth, Travis apparently had 'dibs' on Katie, Frank 'supposed' he would ask Hazel, Leo's going to find some lonely girl at the reception, and Will said he would talk to Nyssa. With that being said I realized I was the odd man out and there were only two girls left." Jason's voice got soft. "One of them is my sister."

It dawned on me that I was the other girl. And I was officially being asked out. I kept my cool.

"Okay. And, ah, who might this other girl be?" I decided to go with the flirty side, just to see is I could make him nervous. My plan entirely backfired.

"Oh, you wouldn't believe how amazing she is. She's gorgeous, responsible, and her eyes look like they belong in a kaleidoscope. She knows what she's talking about and she doesn't take crap from anyone. I have never in my life met someone so perfect."

We were now so close together I could almost feel him breathe. I slightly shivered and batted my eyelashes. I mentally rolled my eyes. _Am I really doing this? _

"I'm a close friend of this girl. She's had her eye on you for a while now. I guarantee you if you just asked her out she'd say yes."

It was quiet in my office for a while. The only things I could hear were the ticking of the clock and my own heartbeat. I started noticing the little things. The way Jason's deep blue eyes seemed to be analyzing me, the lack of product in his hair (all natural is perfect in my book), his soft pink lips…with a small, almost unnoticeable scar above them. I could only wonder about the story behind it.

"So is it a date?" Jason asked. I nodded; my heart racing. Jason pushed a stray strand of hair behind my ear. He backed away and walked out of my office.

I then realized I had been holding my breath for quite some time. I let it out and breathed deeply for a good five seconds. Then I grinned. I had a date!

When Annabeth came back in, she noticed my expression. "What happened?"

"When can we go dress shopping?" I asked. Annabeth lit up.

"So you have a date?"

I nodded. We both squealed. Then we looked at each other in awkward silence.

"No one needs to know that happened." Annabeth said. I nodded in agreement.

"And actually Juniper's adoptive dad is close with William Dare. Rachel and her friend Reyna are also invited."

"So they can come with us and we can investigate while we find a way to look good."

We smiled at each other. All of a sudden there was a loud knocking on our door. Annabeth opened it, and the door nearly knocked her out. Percy looked frantic.

"It's Dare Manor. Someone broke into it last night."

**Well then. Someone requested a plot twist, and I know for a fact that many of my followers are Jasper fans. I would say Merry Christmas, but as Katie pointed out, "It's not even Thanksgiving!" **

**My little sisters and mom are watching The Nanny in the other room. I can hear the theme song. R&R!**


	7. Investigating

Frank POV

We each got into a company car and drove to Dare Manor. Rachel was flipping out over what had happened. One of her friends was there, comforting her, but also looking distressed. Annabeth approached the two and talked with them for a moment before waving Travis over. He talked to them for a few minutes, and then disappeared with Rachel and her friend inside the mansion. Annabeth called my name.

"Frank, come look at this. Can you identify what may have happened?"

The door was busted wide open. The brass handle seemed slightly dented. The welcome mat was kicked aside.

"We think someone may have applied heat to the lock until it busted, and then easily shoved the door open. Could that have happened?" Annabeth asked.

"Where would the heat have come from?" I replied. I didn't get an answer. "Exactly. No, I think someone with a powerful kick busted the lock out and got the door open."

"Do you know how hard someone would have to kick for that to work?" Annabeth questioned.

"It all depends on the opposing force. If the door was only slightly locked, or not locked at all, it wouldn't have had to have been very powerful. If it was locked all the way, then yes, these are highly trained criminals. Come on Annabeth, you should know this."

Annabeth nodded, considering what I'd said. "What other evidence is there?"

We heard a window slide open. Hazel stuck her head out of the second story window. "Hey, you guys might want to come see this."

Annabeth and I raced upstairs to see what had happened. Hazel and Nico had busted into one of the safes. Hazel bore a grim expression.

"There had to have been at least three million in diamonds just in here."

"How can you be sure?" I asked. Nico waved me off.

"Hazel can sniff out jewels like a bloodhound. I trust her judgment."

"Okay, so let's say there were three million dollars in diamonds in here. The Dares have so many servants and maids it's highly probable a criminal would get spotted. How did no one notice this?" Annabeth asked us in frustration. We pondered that in silence for a while. Nico's face fell.

"What if someone did notice? Any criminal willing to break into a highly monitored mansion and steal millions of dollars in precious jewels wouldn't let a maid stand in their way."

Nico's words hit me hard.

"Wait, so you're saying—" Hazel hesitantly started.

"That's exactly what I'm saying. Oh man, I can feel it. I know there's a corpse hidden in this manor somewhere."

That was creepy. How can you sense a corpse is nearby? In the two years I'd worked with those people I had never seen Nico so determined. He had to be onto something. Sure enough we heard a loud scream.

"Oh—oh my-what the-holy-!" The four of us followed the sound of the shrieks and eventually ended up in a kitchen. Piper had her hands cupped over her mouth; her face pale.

"Th—the—in the-look!" Piper pushed the dumbwaiter open. Sure enough there was a maid, bound with bed sheets and a cork stuffed into her mouth. Her eyes were open in terror. The sight was horrifying. I started to feel sick to my stomach. Nico closed the dumbwaiter.

"This may be a bad time, but I told you so."

Travis, Rachel, and Rachel's friend joined us in the kitchen. We showed Rachel our discovery.

"I knew something was up when Irene didn't wake me for breakfast this morning! She hasn't missed a day of work since I can remember."

Leo came in next. "I called the homicide department. They'll be here shortly." He noticed Rachel's friend. "Well hello there."

Rachel's friend rolled her eyes. "Es habitual en él para golpear a las niñas mientras investigaba? (Is it usual for him to hit on girls while investigating?)"

Leo placed a hand over his chest. "Sólo si la chica en cuestión es de gran belleza, como es. (Only if the girl in question is exceptionally beautiful, such as you are.)"

I had no idea of what he had said to her, but she was blushing.

"Mi nombre es Reyna. Y el tuyo? (My name is Reyna. And yours is?)"

"Leo. ¿Hablas inglés? (Do you speak English?)"

The girl nodded. "Of course I speak English. I wasn't aware that I wasn't the only Spanish speaking person in the room."

Leo laughed. Of course the two of them hit it off. There was a knock on the door.

"This is Channel 7 News, may we come in?"

Rachel's eyes grew. "Paparazzi! They can't know about this!"

Rachel's friend looked to Leo. "Okay player, you want to be my momentary boyfriend?"

"Say what now? I mean, yeah, sure. Okay."

"Good." Rachel's friend grabbed a throw pillow from out of the living room and stuffed it under her shirt. Then she spilled a pitcher of water onto her lap and all over the floor.

"What are you doing?" Leo asked, a strange look on his face. Rachel's friend shrugged.

"I'm fixing to give birth to your baby, if anyone asks. We'll take them on a wild goose chase to an imaginary hospital in the middle of nowhere. Once we lose them we can come back."

"Channel 7 News, we are fixing to come in."

"Come on." Rachel's friend tugged on Leo and slammed the door open. She began yelling at the newspeople to leave the Dares alone since she was the reason we were all gathered there. Apparently she was "pregnant with quintuplets" and her water just broke. She and Leo jumped into the car he had driven over here in and they began leading the newspeople away.

Rachel laughed once they were all gone. "I love Reyna. But what are we going to do about Irene?" Our attention went back to the dumbwaiter.

The car outside honked. Our head of transportation at the Big Office, Chris Rodriguez, knocked on the door. "Where's the body I'm supposed to haul off?"

"In here." Annabeth replied.

Chris wrapped Irene's body in a blue body bag and got Travis to help him carry her out. He came back in with a message for us.

"By the way, there's going to be a big meeting on the 5th of December. The Big People, you people, people like me, we're all going to be there."

"Thank you for the heads-up." Hazel replied as Chris left.

Annabeth and I went back outside to examine the door.

"I'm telling you it was kicked open. We just need some evidence."

I stared at the door for a long time. Annabeth looked up.

"Hey, somebody go close the window upstairs."

"Got it." Jason yelled back. When he closed the window, Annabeth shook her head rapidly.

"Stupid dust getting in my hair."

I pinched some of it out of her hair. "Rachel, how often are your windows cleaned?"

"Three times a day, why?"

If what she said was true, then there shouldn't have been any dust up there. In fact, as I examined it, I realized it wasn't dust. It was dirt. When I shared my revelation with Annabeth, her eyes grew.

"Someone must have gotten in through the window. The dirt fell off of their shoes. And it landed in my hair!"

I got Will to take a few samples of the dirt to examine after he checked the safe for fingerprints.

We got ready to leave when Nyssa stopped us. "We can't leave without Leo."

Of course she was right. We had all came together, so we all had to leave together. Piper crossed her arms and smiled.

"Actually, I have a proposition for all of us girls. Since there's a wedding just around the corner I say we all go dress shopping once Reyna gets back with Leo."

"Sounds good to me." Hazel agreed. Katie, Rachel and Annabeth were for it too. Thalia and Nyssa weren't exactly dress girls, but they agreed to go with them.

When the dark green Camaro pulled up in the driveway of Dare manor, we were all curious to hear their story. The windows were down and a Spanish station was playing loudly. Go figure. Both Leo and Reyna—apparently that was her name—were laughing as if they had had a good time avoiding paparazzi.

Reyna agreed to go shopping with the girls, and to give her testimony as to what she had witnessed. Percy called Annabeth's name after they had walked a good ten feed away. She walked back in our direction and stopped in front of him.

"Didn't you say something about matching colors?"

Annabeth seemed proud that he'd remembered. "We'll text you guys once we get that part figured out."

They just stood there for a while, waiting on the other to say something. Meanwhile Travis started a chant: "Kiss her, kiss her, kiss her!" We all joined in. Slowly Percy went to kiss her cheek. Annabeth surprised us all by going straight for a liplock. All of the girls started cheering. I couldn't believe it had actually happened, either. Thalia ruined the moment.

"We're fixing to leave without you."

It's not like they listened. Annabeth ignored Thalia completely. The best part was when Travis turned to Jason and said, "You're next." The look on his face was priceless. The only expression better than his was Piper's.

Percy and Annabeth finally broke their much-needed kiss. Annabeth smiled and began walking with the other girls down the driveway again. Leo turned and faced us once they were out of earshot. A triumphant grin was on his face, stretching from pointed ear to ear. He told us news that confirmed the end of the world was coming.

"I got a date!"

**Success! Leo's not forever alone anymore! And there's some Percabeth for you guys who wanted it.**


	8. A Proposal and Shania

Jason POV

Reyna looked familiar. There, I said it. I recognized Reyna but I had no idea where I'd seen her before. I'd had to ask her when we'd gone to Grover's wedding. Speaking of which, I couldn't believe I'd had that conversation with Piper. I practically summed up what had been running through my mind ever since she started with us and she was okay with it. And the best part was she had felt the same way. I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning when she said yes.

The other guys had gotten quiet. I realized they were all looking at me.

"What?"

They started laughing. Percy lightly hit my shoulder.

"Thinking about Piper?"

The sad thing is I couldn't tell him he was wrong. They started laughing again.

"So we have Percy and Annabeth together. Jason and Piper are together. I'm going with Reyna. Thalia's forever alone. Rachel doesn't have or want a date. I'm assuming Travis has asked Katie out."

Leo gave Travis a pointed look. Travis shrugged. Percy shook his head.

"She's going to kill you, man."

"I know. That's why I still haven't asked her yet."

Nico sighed. "I don't understand your tactics about girls. I don't even understand girls."

Percy wrapped an arm around Nico for dramatic effect. "Let me let you in on a little secret: girls don't even understand girls. They're too complicated."

"Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you, Captain Obvious."

"You're welcome, Lieutenant Sarcasm."

Nico crossed his arms in a childish manner. "Nooooo, Thalia's Lieutenant Sarcasm. Get it right."

"You were saying, Leo?" Frank asked. Leo snapped.

"Right. So after Katie kills Travis and they go to the wedding together, that still leaves a few available ladies. I take it you and Nyssa are going together, Will?"

Will gave Leo a strange look. "What makes you say that?"

Leo grinned. "I don't know. She was gone for an awfully long time the other day when you asked to, and I quote: '_borrow her'_. Anything can happen behind a locked lab door."

I could tell Leo was right by the expression on Will's face.

"Okay, so they're going together. Frank, that leaves Hazel. Now, I'm going to hold down the number five on my cell phone. That will speed dial Hazel. You tell her who you are and that you want to go with her. She has no choice but to say yes. Have fun." Leo pulled out his phone and Frank snatched it away from him.

"Are you crazy?"

"Of course I am; that's why Reyna's head over heels for me."

"Well I'm not Reyna. I'm also not crazy."

"You're also on a deadline to ask her to the wedding, which is three nights from now." Leo stated that matter-of-factly. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. He's such a Leo.

Travis pumped his fist in the air. "I know how to ask her out!"

We all stared at him. That was so random I didn't know how to react. Travis took our silence as curiosity, and he explained his theory.

"Okay, so when the flowers mysteriously appeared for Annabeth and Piper, I heard all of the girls talking in the lounge. They started talking about what the perfect boyfriend would do, and yadda yadda yadda. I heard Katie say her favorite flowers are roses with meaning, her favorite chocolate is dark chocolate, and that her birthstone is a sapphire. All I have to do is get those things, and all is forgiven. I'm even willing to bet that I can get all of us free food in the process."

He heard _all of them_ say what their ideal guy is like?

"So what did Piper say?" I asked. It was supposed to sound like a challenge, but I seriously wanted to know. Travis shrugged.

"I dunno. I heard them all say what they like, but I only paid attention to Katie. Who wants to go shopping with me?"

That's how we ended up at Queen Marie's Jewelry Store. Travis huddled us up outside the store.

"Okay. We go in, we find the sapphire, we get it, and we leave. Simple as that."

We went inside the store and split up. I took the far left corner of the place. There was a variety of gems to choose from. I found a chart and began looking at it. I realized they were birthstones. I found sapphires under September. I wondered what month Piper was born in and took a picture of the chart with my phone.

I found one of the saleswomen and asked for her assistance. Her nametag read: HI! MY NAME IS _Kinzie_.

"Excuse me, Kinzie; do you know where any sapphire jewelry is?"

Kinzie nodded eagerly. "Uh-huh. All right here you can find our large variety of sapphires: bracelets, necklaces, earrings, rings, watches, you name it and we're bound to have it. Tell me when you're interested in buying."

I nodded. "Thanks, I will."

Their selection was great. In fact, it was better than Kinzie had described it. I called Travis over. I could tell he was impressed, too. He found a small silver ring with sapphires dotted around it, and then a bigger one on top. He seemed satisfied with it, so I called Kinzie back over.

"You find something already?" Kinzie asked. I nodded.

"Yes, he's interested in this ring. How much would that be?"

"Oh, it's ranging from $55 to $85. It may be a tad expensive, but all of our jewelry items include intricate designs and they're made with the best quality you could want. Besides, if this girl is really worth it, the money will be well-spent."

This girl was obviously no amateur. She knew how to sell. She had Travis thinking about it. Travis, the ultimate conman and bargain master, was thinking about spending $85 dollars for a ring. It was unbelievable. What was even more unbelievable was when he agreed to it and pulled out a $100 bill.

Our next stop was Dylan's Candy Bar. That place was so tempting; I don't care how old or young you are. Just walking in made me wish I could just turn to someone and beg to have it all, rather than having to tell myself _Okay, you're a grown man. No sugar highs unless it's a special occasion. _

Travis knew what he wanted and located it almost immediately: a green heart-shaped box of dark chocolates. He bought that, along with a 36" tube of flavored sugar for himself. Apparently he doesn't have any rules about sugar highs.

Will came in and got several bags of rock candy. He explained that they were his favorites.

The rest of the guys had to stay in the car, because they swore they'd go ballistic if they smelled the store.

Our final stop was a flower shop. We all went into that one to give Travis moral support. He dinged the bell on the front desk. A girl came out of the back room and shocked all of us. She looked exactly like Katie, except she had dark black hair and freckles covering almost every inch of her body. Her nametag said her name was Miranda.

"Can I help you?" She asked.

"Yes, I would like to buy some roses."

"For who?"

I thought it was kind of personal, but Travis knew what to do.

"My hopeful date to a wedding. I've liked her for a while now."

Miranda nodded. "So do you want to express love, admiration, friendship, remembrance, enthusiasm, or enchantment? Or a combination of them?"

"All of them except friendship and remembrance. I'm kind of trying to get out of the friend zone, and I definitely don't want to remember these days."

That was a good idea for future reference. I would definitely be coming back and asking for Miranda's assistance.

Miranda nodded. "Our pricing system is strange. You tell me how much you're willing to pay, and I'll show you what I can do for that amount."

"How does $45 sound?" Travis asked. Miranda smiled.

"That's one of our usual prices. Give me about two minutes and your order will be ready."

When the arrangement was finished, Travis had definitely gotten his money's worth. Miranda was good at what she did, like Kinzie. I could tell she liked it, too.

"Thank you so much. By the way, Miranda, do you know Katie Gardner?"

Miranda laughed. "Know her? She's my sister on our mom's side."

Mind = blown. I thought Katie's only siblings were her little step-sister Maggie and her half-brother Lucas. Well, you learn something new every day.

Travis thanked Miranda and we headed for the mall. I was curious to see how his plan would work out. He hadn't even told us all of the details; just the outline. We found the girls sitting in the food court with dozens of bags. Thalia noticed us first. We walked over.

Travis wasted no time with his plans. After setting the chocolates and flowers on the table, he immediately took Katie's hands and looked straight into her eyes.

"Katie, we've been partners for a long time now. Sure I irritate you, but at least it's some form of affection from you. You have no idea how crazy I've been for you. With the wedding coming up, I figured now would be a good time to ask." Travis pulled out the small velvet box with the ring in it and opened it. "Katie, will you please be my date for the wedding?"

Emotions flickered through Katie's emerald eyes. She finally grinned and nodded. Travis stood up and cupped his mouth.

"SHE SAID YES!" Everyone immediately began applauding and cheering. Almost every place in the food court brought over a small serving of food, even McDonalds. As all of us dined on our food court feast, Travis leaned over to me.

"You're welcome for the free food."

I almost choked on a piece of chicken as I laughed. I had forgotten about Travis's bet earlier.

I wish I could have pulled something suave like that. Travis never failed to impress anyone in a way, shape, or form.

"So did you all get your dresses yet?" Frank asked.

"Everyone except for Piper." Nyssa replied, stealing one of Nico's waffle fries.

"I don't like any of the ones we've looked at. They're too baggy, or they're ugly, or there are too many rhinestones, or the color just doesn't look good on me."

"You know you loved the hot pink one." Thalia teased. Piper's expression was murderous.

"That atrocious thing shouldn't be legal. No one will ever buy it!" Piper guided her sentences to us guys. "It was hideous. It had big '80s themed poufy sleeves, a ridged scoop neck, and it was ankle length. It was fitted all the way until it got to the knees. There it fanned out into tulle. And everywhere from the waist down rhinestones were packed together so closely you could barely see the fabric. And they made me try it on!"

"I have no idea what tulle is, but I think there's a hair in this burger." Percy studied his food.

"Way to kill the moment." Will congratulated him.

"No, I'm serious." Percy pulled out a long strand of bright purple hair out of his burger.

Thalia gagged and covered her mouth. She wasn't faking, either.

"Back on task, there's one more store where she could find a dress." Katie informed us.

"And it's the one store she refuses to go into." Reyna added.

"Well I guess I have to go in, because I can't exactly show up at a wedding in blue jeans." Piper seemed disgusted at the thought of having to go into whatever store it was.

"Of course you couldn't; they'd make you put on a shirt." Leo replied. It amazed me how he said such things and kept a straight face.

Piper rolled her eyes and dragged Annabeth into what had to be _the store_: Precious Moments.

"Who wants to bet she finds the perfect dress in there?" Nyssa asked.

"You know she will. If only she'd listened to us." Hazel replied. About a half hour later the two girls came out of the store. Piper was holding a dress bag. Nyssa hit the table.

"Dang, I should have put money on that."

Piper set her dress down and excused herself to the restroom. Rachel laughed and sipped her Sprite. "You guys are awesome. Thank you so much."

"Are you kidding? You and Reyna made it." Annabeth replied. We finally persuaded the girls that we had work the next day and they needed to go home and sleep.

"I call the Mustang." Thalia jumped up from the table and made a beeline for the exit.

Girls began calling out cars and shotgun right and left. Piper returned from the restroom as soon as they had all disappeared.

"Did they leave me?"

We all nodded. Piper sighed.

"Great. I was their ride, which means I gave Annabeth the keys when I tried on the dress. This in turn means I now have no ride home."

Percy stood up. "You know, I hate to pull a Thalia, but I call the Expedition."

I knew where it was going from there. One way or another I was Piper's ride home. I climbed into the Chevrolet Pickup, and Piper got in shotgun.

"Thanks." She told me once she buckled in.

"Not a problem." I told her. "Are you ready for the wedding?"

Piper sighed. "I wish. You know they're going to schedule for us to get our nails and hair done. But as an individual, yes, I am ready for the wedding."

"That's good, I guess."

Piper began telling me all of the twists and turns to get to her house. I decided to just GPS it. Piper punched in her address, and I began listening to the GPS voice.

"What's her name?" Piper asked. I raised an eyebrow.

"Pardon?"

"What did you name your GPS?"

"I didn't."

Piper looked shocked that I hadn't named my GPS. I honestly never saw a need to.

"Her name s going to be Shania."

"Why are you naming my GPS Shania?" I asked. Really Piper?

"Because if she won't be your baby then she can be mine."

"No, Shania is definitely mine." I replied.

"Good. You accept ownership of your daughter."

I rolled my eyes as I pulled into her driveway. Piper kissed my cheek before getting out. After she had gone inside, I looked to the GPS.

"Shania, huh? Well Shania, why don't you take me home?"

I plugged in my address and listened to Shania's voice tell me where to go. I still couldn't believe Piper named the GPS. In fact, Travis naming his GPS had ended several of his relationships. He'd start talking about Britney and how she was good company because she talked to him, and then whoever his current girl was would get offended and leave him before he could explain who Britney was.

_At least Katie knows who Britney is,_ I thought. My phone beeped when I was almost home. I pulled over and looked at it. I had a new friend request on FaceBook.

_Shania GPS wants to be your friend. Accept or Decline? _Piper made Shania a FaceBook. Sometimes I wondered about the mental sanity of the people I worked with.

**Ta-da! A new, even longer chapter! Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Question of the day: What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving? **

**Song stuck in my head: Seven Nation Army, by the White Stripes. We play that in band sometimes. (Shout out to all the band geeks, especially is you play a brass instrument!) **

**Trivia: Did you know that in The Titan's Curse when they were on the train with all of the cars, when Thalia and Percy were sitting in that one car, the White Stripes had a song playing? It has a possibility of being Seven Nation Army!**

**One more thing (since I don't like long A/Ns): Could the Seven of the prophecy possibly be a seven nation army themselves? Think about it: Frank's Canadian-Chinese-Asian, Hazel's Cajun, Jason's Roman (we'll stick with that for him), Piper's French-Cherokee, Leo's Spanish, Annabeth is Greek, and Percy is American? I know I'm stretching it, but just out of curiosity…**

**Love you guys! R&R!**


	9. Avenge and Revenge

Nyssa POV

Was I uber-thrilled about wearing a dress? Heck to the no. Did I think I looked good in it? In a way, yes. I certainly hadn't been trying to impress anyone, but I was pleased with the way I looked. I couldn't get my mind off of some of the things Reyna had said, though.

She said she had been in Black Diamond around the same time we had been. That's the area where the first murder took place. And she almost met the description Annabeth put up in _**Identify**_ to a tee.

I seriously doubted Reyna was part of our criminal gang. But who better to target the Dares than someone they'd trusted for years? Stuff like that happened all of the time.

I became a little more conscious around Leo. He'd always been like a brother to me. Will said he was acting weird the other night and just randomly suggested that we go together. I didn't see how Leo could know about us. We'd kept our relationship clandestine for the past (almost) two months. We weren't sure how anyone would handle an in-office relationship. But since everyone was "together" for the wedding, I guessed that no one would be surprised about us. I wanted to talk it over with Will, first.

Will, apparently, was completely opposed to it.

"We'd never hear the end of it." That was his main argument.

"They'd eventually lay off. Did you not see how dramatic Travis was last night? Or Annabeth? And if we tell them the night of the wedding, they'll brush it off and focus on the happy couple. They'll know, but it'll go to the back of their minds. I'm almost one-hundred percent positive that 13 out of the 15 people that work here are ADD. They'll forget almost as soon as we tell them."

"But what if they don't?"

I threw my hands in the air. "So what if they don't, Will? Does it really matter if they know or not? For crying out loud we're pretty much the only people in the office that haven't publicized our relationship in any way, shape or form! What's the harm in it?"

"What's the good in it?"

He did not seriously ask me that. Surely he didn't.

"What's the good in it? The good in it is support! Last night Annabeth was about thirty dollars short of buying the one dress she was excited about. When she wasn't looking we all pitched in about four dollars and finished the payment. She looked incredible in that dress and we wanted Percy to see her in it. We were supporting her relationship like the good friends we are."

"Did you stop to think that maybe Annabeth didn't want help? She'll even tell you one of her biggest flaws is pride."

So that's what it was about. "This about your own ego, isn't it? Are you ashamed of me or something? Am I not good enough to be seen with?" I could tell I'd struck a nerve.

"Nyssa, you know that's not what I meant."

I crossed my arms. "Really? Then what did you mean? Because it sure sounds like that's exactly what you meant."

"Nyssa in high school everyone assumed my life was so perfect I had to screw up somewhere. They labeled me as a player because I never actually dated. I just asked different girls to different things. It wasn't anything serious, just for the sake of saying I had a date. We weren't even together once we arrived wherever we were going. It would kill me if a title like that came back."

"This is one date! None of us went to high school with you! No one knows about that story other than you and me. I understand this is an emotional issue, but I have problems of my own. In high school I was made fun of because I didn't go to things. No one bothered to even ask me, so I didn't bother to go. Do you know how many homecoming games I skipped; how many dances and parties I threw away the invitations to? Just about all of them from sixth grade to my senior year.

The night of my senior prom I went with the guy I had been dating at the time. That night he left me for one of the popular girls. Would it kill you to put aside your own desires for the thirty whole seconds it takes to announce you've secretly been in a relationship for two months?"

I honestly didn't care how rude I'd sounded. Every word of what I'd said had been true. Will faltered when I finished my rant.

"Nyssa I didn't know—"

We connected in a hug so meaningful I felt my anger melt away. I sighed.

"I know you didn't know, and now I'm just asking for one small thing. I want to be the lucky girl with the amazing guy for the first time in my life."

"Okay then. Go for it."

I had slightly backed away, unsure if I'd heard him correctly.

"What?"

Will twirled a loose strand of hair from my bun. "If it really means that much to you, you should do it. I'm just overreacting over nothing. I've felt the same way you've felt all this time, just from the opposite end. And what's life without a little risk?"

"YOLO?" I asked. I knew how much he hated that expression. Will scowled.

"More like God no. I swear geniuses created YOLO to get rid of the idiots on this planet."

I laughed. We were okay, the two of us. I agreed not to tell anyone until we were at the wedding reception. That way no one would pay much attention to us.

"Hey, who changed the firewall password?" Katie asked us.

"It's the same as it's always been." Percy replied.

"No it's not."

"CSINY15?" Annabeth asked.

"I already tried that. It said 'access denied'." Katie called back. Soon enough we were all crowded around our own computer screens, trying to hack into our own firewall system.

"It won't allow access to anyone." Nico called out. Thalia called our supervisors.

"Yes, this is Thalia Grace with the CSI Department established in Manhattan. Our firewall is acting up. None of us can get into it, and we haven't changed the password in the past three years." Thalia put her hand over the receiver. "We haven't changed the password in the past three years, right?"

I shook my head. Thalia nodded and put the phone back to her ear.

"I understand that you're busy, but you can't expect us to do our jobs if we can't even access our own firewall. Actually no, it won't be our problem when you can't catch a freaking murderous cult because you didn't give us the equipment we needed! Well they tried to get into it and it's not working on anyone's computer."

Thalia rolled her eyes and made a mouth out of her hand by hitting her four fingers against her thumb.

"Put Luke on the line. I don't care what your orders are; put Luke on the freaking phone. No, _you_ listen to _me_, Malcolm. When you get fired because you didn't come down to help us solve a serious murder, I will throw a celebration party and leave all of the trash in your yard."

Thalia's electric blue eyes seemed to have voltage racing through them.

"Don't you **dare** put me on hold! Malcolm!" Thalia stomped her foot and hung up. "Annabeth I hate your brother."

"I know, I know." Annabeth replied, taking out her own phone.

"Hey Chris, can you get Luke on the line? Thanks." Thalia stuck her tongue out at Annabeth, who smiled smugly. "Luke! Someone changed our firewall password. Do you know how to fix it back? Really? That's great! Thank you so much. I'll call you later. Thalia says she loves you. Bye!"

"Wait what?" Thalia leapt at Annabeth and tried to snatch the phone away, but Annabeth had already hung up. She held it just out of Thalia's reach. I loved how immaturely mature they were.

"Luke said he'd check the system for bugs, and then he could reboot our old password or transfer it to a new one so it couldn't get broken into again." Annabeth notified us.

"That's perfect." I said as Jason attempted to pry his sister off of Annabeth.

Then our emergency alarms went off, ruining the light moment. That only happened when 911 transferred calls from their message systems to ours.

"Somebody please help! There's a catfight and one of them has a gun at the salon on the corner of Fifth and Maple!" The line went dead after that. We all wore the same expression.

"A salon shootout?" Travis asked in disbelief as Jason, Percy, and I grabbed our vests.

"Evidently. Nobody leave until we get back." Percy ordered as the three of us raced out the door.

The three of us piled into a NYPD squad car the cops donated to us. Jason turned on the sirens and slammed on the gas. We weren't very far from the scene of the crime. We swerved through traffic and skidded to a stop in front of the salon.

"Nyssa, go in and stall as long as you can. We'll be right in." Percy ordered. I jumped out of the squad car on the impulse of hearing an order. I sighed. We should have brought Piper. She's better at breaking up fights than I am.

I stepped inside the salon, gun ready. "NYPD, lower your weapons immediately."

I was ignored by the one wielding the weapon. She was arguing with the salon owner. I recognized the salon owner as my brother's ex-girlfriend Silena Beauregard. Silena looked terrified.

"L-look, I don't know what you want. We don't have any money here; it's all in the bank. Apparently you know our password, so why not just go there?" Good, Silena. Make my job easier.

"Because I know you better than that. You do know what I want, but you know better than to say it in front of all of these people." The masked intruder cocked the gun. Silena whimpered.

What did the intruder want so badly? "NYPD, lower your gun or I will fire." I repeated.

"Save your breath, Miss NYPD. This business is between the two of us." The intruder replied.

"By drawing a weapon in an open area and pointing it at someone, you've made it my business as well." I stepped closer cautiously. Oh my god, where were Percy and Jason when you needed them?

"Miss Beauregard here has something of mine and she refuses to give it to me. I'm simply here to collect it." The intruder was obviously female. She stepped closer to Silena, who shrieked.

One of the cowering customers threw a bottle of blonde dye at the intruder. It hit the back of her head, and it splattered all along the side of her black uniform.

"That wasn't a wise decision." The intruder snapped. She aimed her gun at Silena. Silena shrieked, and a few tears slipped from her eyes. Suddenly the salon door slammed open.

"Looking for this?" Percy asked. He was holding a…a CD? The intruder scowled and whirled around. She still had Silena cornered, but at least the gun wasn't pointed at Silena anymore.

"Where did you get that?" The intruder snapped.

"Oh, your partner gave it to me whenever we cornered him. He's kind of lonely in the squad car. Care to join him?"

So _that's _where Percy and Jason were. Jason must have been in the car monitoring the partner. The intruder grabbed a bottle of red dye and threw it in Percy's direction. Percy dodged it and it hit the door with such force that it shut it again. Instead of frustration, the criminal seemed pleased.

"There's more than one way to get rid of two cops and a liar. If I go down you all go down with me."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"The bomb in the supply closet. There are precisely four minutes until it goes off. It ruins all evidence of anything."

The customers in the store wailed. Percy busted the glass out of the window and hurried all of them out. None of us could leave, though. Percy and I had to make sure the criminal didn't kill Silena.

"Three minutes." The intruder announced. The customers of the salon began to file out more quickly. I grabbed one of the women leaving.

"Go to the squad car and warn them about the bomb. Go tell everyone else on this street. Get the others to help you!"

She nodded and jumped out of the store window.

"Two minutes."

I seriously hoped that woman could move fast enough to evacuate everyone.

"So are you two going to go down like that other one—what was his name, Beckendorf? He also died in one of our bombs." She knew we weren't really NYPD.

"Charlie." Silena whispered.

The villainous woman continued upon seeing Silena's anguish."You were his partner, weren't you? You could have easily saved him like you did for all of those people just now. But you didn't."

"That's a lie!" Percy defended. The criminal obviously didn't care.

"Call it what you want. You two were on the docks with my ex-coworkers. They told you the bomb was going to go off. You two ignored them and rescued everyone else. You caught a glimpse of the bomb as it counted its final twenty seconds and yelled to Beckendorf. He was still on our boat. You got out safely. The bomb blew up the ship and took Beckendorf down with it, and it's your entire fault."

"IT IS NOT!" Percy roared. I had never seen him so outraged in the time I'd known him.

"Oh look, we're down to one minute. You could easily hand over the disk. I'd leave you be, and you'd have everyone evacuated. Or, you can let the bomb go off, killing a coworker and an innocent bystander. Which will it be?"

"Percy, Code 14." I ordered.

"Are you crazy?" He asked.

"Code 14. NOW." I seethed. This woman just admitted to killing my brother and was placing the blame on Percy. Even if I went down this woman was **NOT **getting out alive under my watch.

Percy stuck the disk in his pocket and ran. He waved everybody gathered outside away. He yelled at them to leave. And then he left as well.

Meanwhile I attacked the criminal. She seemed shocked, but only momentarily. We fought for a while, knocking over tables and racks of magazines.

"SILENA, RUN!" I yelled.

Silena panicked and ran outside. She seemed in a daze; lost even. Finally she made up her mind and disappeared. The criminal and I continued to fight.

"There are twenty seconds until the bomb goes off. I won't have my disk either way. Is your life really worth taking mine?"

I realized she was right. Percy had the disk and was long gone, probably back at HQ. Something came to mind as I had her pinned down. I was in complete disguise as a NYPD officer. I grabbed my cuffs and chained her to a nearby table. I put pepper spray in her eyes so she wouldn't see clearly.

"No. My life isn't worth yours. But yours is worth my brother's."

"Who the flip is your brother?" She screamed in agony.

"Beckendorf."

I jumped out of the window while she howled in rage. I took cover behind a mailbox. Probably not my best move, but it was better than nothing. The building exploded. Dyes of assorted colors flooded the streets, and the plastic appliances that had been inside turned to boiling pink liquid.

It was a horribly beautiful sight. The streets flooded with police and FBI officers. I fled from the scene of the crime, tears flooding from my eyes. It was a bittersweet moment for me. My brother had finally been avenged. Painful memories came flooding back to my mind. Even more painful than the memories of Beckendorf was when they found Silena in the supply closet. Apparently she had tried to stop the bomb from going off and didn't get out of the escape exit in time.

**Wow. That was hard for me to write. I hope it's obvious I'm trying to keep this completely AU story as close to the actual series as I can. Don't know what I'm going to do with Luke, though.**


	10. Singing In The Rain

Travis POV

Once Nyssa, Jason, and Percy returned, things weren't as lively as they had been before. I could definitely understand that; Nyssa and Percy had just watched someone dear to them get blown to bits for the second time. I could tell that they both felt pretty guilty about it, even though they weren't guilty at all. They picked the best option for that scenario, actually.

No one really wanted to joke around or make any sarcastic comments anymore. I knew they would eventually let up; they _had_ to. I'd have gone insane if they hadn't. The only reason they'd gotten better after what happened with Beckendorf was because Piper had just started here and they didn't want to make her think we were rude. We still had Ibuprofen, Tylenol, and leftover ice cream.

Ice cream was very symbolic at our office. It was used for the bad times: break-ups, deaths, injuries, etc. It was also used for the good times: New relationships, anniversaries, babies being born, solving a case; stuff like that.

Surprisingly Katie seemed okay. Sure she was tense, but she didn't seem affected too badly. Thalia, of course, was going on a rampage. Jason finally temporarily adopted Nico and locked Thalia in her office until she cooled off. Will did the same for Leo. Percy was pacing the lounge, muttering to himself. Annabeth decided to go talk to him.

Katie worried me though. She looked okay, but I had learned very quickly that she was very different from other girls. Most girls had a few switches. You'd say one thing and they'd respond to how they took it; you clarified what you meant and the discussion carried on. Katie had several switches. She wasn't bipolar, but she was very…fragile, I guess. With a lot of coats of bubble wrap.

"Are you okay?" I finally had to ask her. She was bothering me by not pulling a Thalia.

Katie sighed. "I guess. Silena and I had met, and we'd gotten close. But we didn't have a relationship, like she and Nyssa did. We were friends but we hadn't seen each other in a while."

I nodded, completely understanding what she meant. For the first time I could actually know how she felt, and exactly what emotions she was going through. And it scared me to death.

I grew up in a huge family. When I was twelve, our family got together for Thanksgiving, and just the babies/kids/teenagers group was 20 people. All of the guys managed to tell me that if I ever understood what a girl meant and it wasn't school related, we had a serious bond. Since we would be going to the wedding together, what kind of bond did that mean in our case?

"Why do you have pictures of yourself everywhere?"

It took me a minute to process that Katie had asked me a question. "Hmm?"

Katie rolled her eyes and gestured to my computer. When it had been idle for a while, it would start a slideshow of my pictures. Most of them did look like they were of me. I also had a few pictures slid under the glass covering of my desk. And a few framed ones rested on my computer table.

"That's not me." I told her.

Katie crossed her arms. "Really now? Then who is it? I know you don't have a twin."

I leaned back in my chair. "Actually, he's a year younger than me. Other than that, yes, yes we are almost identical twins."

"There is no way. You have got to be lying to me."

I shook my computer mouse to wake up my computer and pulled up my picture file. I found one from a hunting trip when I was fourteen. I showed Katie. My brother and I were both wearing camouflage clothes and sitting up on a tree branch, talking to each other. The deer lease sign was blurry in the background. Katie was gaping at the picture.

"But…who _is_ that?"

"Connor, my little brother. He travels around the world and does a bunch of stuff. Takes pictures of landscapes and sells them for money, learns how to make weird food, things like that."

Katie smirked. "So seeing that he's your brother he's probably the one that ripped off those Girl Scouts at the airport."

"That was him." My little brother, all grown up and wreaking international havoc…he made me so proud.

Katie's eyes got even bigger. "I was joking."

"I wasn't."

Katie laughed. That also scared me. Since when was I funny to her? Nico poked his head in.

"Hey, um, big favor to ask. Thalia's going to flip out when she realizes there's no more Cookies N Cream. Do you mind going to get that, and maybe some more Tylenol?"

"Sure; why not?" I stood up and held the door open for Katie. The nearest Wal*Mart was only three blocks away; we could walk.

Katie reached the door and surprised me by kissing my cheek.

"You never took the mistletoe down." She left me standing there, dumbfounded. I was grinning like an idiot but I really didn't care.

I had to jog a few paces to catch up to her. She laughed and slightly pushed me to the side.

"Losing your touch, Stoll?" Oh no she di-in't.

"In your dreams, Gardner." I replied. I fell into step with her. We walked in silence for a while.

"So tell me more about Connor. I had no idea you even had a brother!"

"And? I didn't know you had a nearly identical sister."

Katie blushed. "You met Miranda?"

"Who do you think sold me your flowers?"

Katie pushed me again. I rolled my eyes and pushed back that time. We came to the end of the block.

"Well, Connor's something of an oddball. He always does the stuff nobody wants to do. He snuck in and spiked the punch at my senior prom."

"Did you go to school with Annabeth? She told me a story like that." Katie said. I nodded.

"Yeah. Her reaction was one of the best ones. She took one sip and spit it out on the floor. One of the biggest hotshots slipped in it and dragged the entire snack table down with him. It was hilarious."

"I'm sure it was. That sounds like something she would do. Did she accuse you of it?"

I shook my head. "My work was mostly anonymous. But Connor and I pulled the best pranks. Everyone knew who we were because of our spontaneity."

"Like what?" Katie was really interested for some reason. The words of my family kept floating through my mind.

"One time he helped me write a song for English. We had to re-write a little kid song for our poetry unit. It was to help 'enhance our rhyming skills' or whatever excuse the teacher gave us."

"What did you do?"

"Row, Row, Row Your Boat. By lunch everyone knew it. That was what got us on the popular charts. The high school A-list, jocks, whatever you want to call it." We reached the end of the second block: one more to go. Good thing, too; it had looked like it was going to rain.

"How did it go?"

She wanted me to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat. I figured _what the heck? No one's around_.

I took a deep breath. "*Swag, swag, swag I have; I have it all the time. YOLO, YOLO, YOLO, YOLO, this is my rhyme.*"

Katie burst out laughing. "Are you serious? You wrote YOLO Swag?"

"You've heard of it?" That was surprising.

"Yeah, one of my friends had just transferred from your school and had it as her ringtone."

Wow. Katie knew who I was before she actually knew who I was. That may not have made sense, but it did in so many ways.

We got to Wal*Mart and split up to get the stuff. I grabbed a small bottle of Tylenol and a thing of Aleve before meeting Katie at the register. She had grabbed a pint of Cookies N Cream for Thalia. I paid and we stepped back outside. Sure enough it was fixing to rain.

"We'd better hurry." Katie said, tying the bag shut. She then looped and tied the plastic handles through one of her back belt loops. I shook my head and we started speed walking back to the office.

We had just finished the first block we heard the thunder.

"Hey do you have your phone? Maybe someone could pick us up." I suggested.

"No. It's on the charger back in our office. Do you have yours?"

I felt in my pockets. "You confiscated it when yours died and you needed to make a call."

Katie stomped her foot and crossed her arms childishly. "Well that's not fair."

"You're right; it's not fair that you stole my phone."

Katie hit my arm. I held my hands up in defense.

"Abuse! Foul! Time out! Ref, are you seeing this?" Katie doubled over laughing at me.

"You're crazy. And why do you always say that?"

I shrugged. "It's what I do. I grew up on a field or court of some kind. Angry parents were always yelling that when someone screwed up, so I just adopted their sayings."

"You're insane. Ow; stop." Katie stopped walking and sat down on a park bench. I looked up.

"Do we have time for this?"

"There is something in my shoe!" Katie dug out a small fuzzball and flicked it onto the concrete.

As soon as she stood up it started pouring down rain. It thundered in the far distance.

"C'mon!" I motioned to Katie. We took off running down the block. I realized something after about thirty seconds: it was already raining. We were soaked to the bone. Why were we wasting our energy trying to get out of it? I grabbed Katie's arm and pulled her to a stop.

"Travis, we're getting soaked!"

"We already are, so why not take our time?"

"Pneumonia isn't exactly what I want the night before a wedding I RSVP'd to. It also wouldn't help us solve the case at all!"

I grabbed her other arm and held her still. She had no choice but to look at me.

"Katie. We're dripping water and we have two blocks to walk. If we kept running full force we'd run out of breath and have to slow down or stop, meaning more time in the rain. That or we'd slip and fall, nearly killing ourselves."

We held eye contact for a full ten seconds. I could tell Katie was debating what I'd said.

"Alright then. If we walked or ran we'd end up getting pneumonia. What do you propose we do?"

An idea immediately came to mind. I kept hold of her right hand and slid my other hand onto her hip. Katie must have thought I was crazy.

"Dance with me."

This is where YOLO is applied. Like I said, Katie had several switches. She could have responded in a million ways right then, rational or not. I honestly didn't know what to expect.

"I can't exactly lead, now can I?"

I found it kind of attractive that Katie had to slightly look up to make eye contact. It made me feel powerful in a way. I took a step back and Katie went with me. Side, side, turn, front, back, repeat. That was our pattern. Gradually we sped up. I managed to get us to the end of the block. One more to go.

We continued our pattern, creating our own rhythm as we danced down the street. At one point I proved my logic; Katie slipped in a puddle and would have fallen if I hadn't caught her. She could have easily gotten up, but she seemed frozen in my arms. It was kind of cheesy and cliché, but it was perfect at the moment.

Katie eventually stood and cleared her throat. "We should probably just walk the rest of the way."

We were only ten feet from the office. She was right. We walked the rest of the way. Like usual, I got the door for her. Hazel's eyebrows shot up when she saw us, dripping wet.

"Where have you been?"

"Getting ice cream for Thalia." I replied, shutting the door.

"Jason, Percy, and Nico just took her, Annabeth, and Piper out for ice cream. They just got back about ten minutes ago."

We were set up. They wanted us out of the office for some reason. I got the door to our office. Katie walked in and stopped almost immediately. I followed her in.

"What's up?" I asked.

"You tell me," Katie replied. She took what I'd said quite literally. I looked up and felt a rush of emotions: surprise, admiration, shock, pride, and a little bit of joy mixed in. Our ceiling was covered in mistletoe.

**Some Tratie fluff to hold you over until I get to write the next chapter. Enjoy! R&R! Sorry I've been so busy; school has me piled down with work. I'll try to publish a small story to tide you over soon. Love you guys!**


	11. Disaster Wedding

**A/N: OHMYGODS! So incredibly sorry for such a long stretch of time! I've been soooo busy lately, and I haven't had time to update. It started bugging me. **

**I made our All Region Band! I'm so excited! AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHH!**

**Please keep my sister and my two best friends in your prayers. They've been sick : (**

Hazel POV

I grabbed a tube of lipstick and uncapped it. I seriously hoped that my dress really did look good on me, and my shopping buddies hadn't just been trying to flatter me.

It was a pastel green dress (think Disney princess Tiana) that had wide straps and a flat neckline. I wore a white sweater over it, since it was freezing that day. The material was fitted up top, and it flowed out into the rest of the dress. It was jagged from around my knee area the rest of the way down (think Tinker Bell) and had another layer of sheer fabric underneath. It reached my mid-shins. They said it complimented my golden eyes or something like that. I'd never really considered my eyes to be gold; I always thought they were, well, hazel.

I checked my appearance once more. I was satisfied with how I looked. I slid on my white flats and grabbed a few more necessities: lipstick (taser), perfume (pepper spray), watch (camera), and a small handgun. Despite years of training I always was armed.

The doorbell rang. I closed my bedroom door, walked down the hall, and answered it. Frank had come to pick me up. I smiled and locked the door on my way out. The two of us got into his car and he turned the keys into the ignition.

"You look nice."

Frank's compliment caught me off guard. I had heard I looked "good", "fine", and even "fancy", but never in my twenty-one years had anyone called me nice looking. It was better than being called "hot" or "sexy". It had depth.

"Thank you, you don't look bad yourself."

We rode in silence for a minute or two. I was really anxious for some reason. _Come on Hazel, this is __**not**__ how a first date is supposed to go. Wait; first date? Well it technically sort of is because we're going together and he picked me up. But it won't be just us. _

I started digging through my purse, desperately trying to silence the voices in my head. I finally found what I was looking for.

"Hey, do you want any gum?"

"Sure."

I placed a piece of Trident orange-flavored gum into Frank's hand. The silence bugged me.

"Are you excited?"

Frank shrugged. "I guess. I'm happy for Grover and Juniper."

"Me, too. I've only been to a few weddings, though."

"I've only been to two weddings. The first one I don't even remember because I was like five, and the other one was huge, so no one really talked to me."

"Was it fun?" I felt needy to conversation, but I just wanted to talk.

"I guess so. The white stretchy thing hit my cousin in the head."

I laughed at that. "You mean the garter?"

"Whatever it's called. We haven't let him live it down to this day."

"I've never caught the bride's bouquet," I added.

Frank nodded. "Legend has it whichever girl catches the bouquet will be the next to get married."

"That's interesting. I never knew that."

"It worked for Juniper. Last year at another wedding she caught the bouquet, and now look."

Could it be true? There was no way to know for sure. We pulled into the chapel parking lot and joined up with the rest of our office near the front. Well, most of the rest of our office. Rachel and Nico were nowhere to be found.

Annabeth turned around to face me. "Aw, you look so pretty."

"Thanks Annabeth, you look good, too."

Annabeth was wearing a silver form-fitting dress. It had one strap over her left shoulder and a flat neckline. It stopped at around her knees. Her pretty blonde hair was pulled into a side-ponytail with a big, dark brown flower bow clipped into it. She wore dark brown, high heel boots, with a black/grey/brown trim around the top. Unlike me, Annabeth didn't seem to be bothered by the temperature.

I grabbed one of the bulletins and began reading through it. Songs, vow readings, and I found what I wanted at the bottom of the page. The list of all of the bridesmaids. Holly Berry, Fern Green, Laurel Hill, Myrtle Rivers…I leaned over to Frank.

"Is it just me, or do all of these names sound nature related?"

Frank read the list and laughed. He pointed out a few I hadn't read yet. The Maid of Honor was Grover's cousin Fawn Springfield. Willow Meadow, Juniper's college roommate, had helped with the décor. Juniper's niece, Summer Rainey, was the flower girl. Surely they were fake names.

Rachel came flying (nearly literally) into the service room, Nico hot on her heels. They squeezed in next to me, pressing me up against Frank. The pew was so crowded I didn't think there was another possible way to fit everyone again.

"Sorry we're late; Janae stopped working halfway here."

Piper crossed her arms. "See, Jason? It's not unnatural to name your GPS."

"What," I asked feeling hopelessly confused, "is this something I should know?"

Jason waved me off. "It's nothing."

"So now she's a nothing. Guess who's getting unfriended as soon as this thing is over with." Piper stuck her tongue out. Jason sighed.

The service started shortly after. All of the bridesmaids wore dark blue dresses with lime green ribbons tied around their waists. The Maid of Honor, Fawn, had hers tied as a sash instead. Juniper was so pretty. Her dress was a crème-white shade that matched her skin perfectly.

_One day that'll be me_. I was startled by my own thoughts. Where had that come from? I wasn't even dating. Maybe that's why I thought that. The overwhelming desire to wear a wedding gown.

We all cheered as they shared their first kiss as a married couple. After they had made their escape from the crowds, the rest of us started leaving for the reception. Reyna grabbed my arm as I went to leave. She lowered her voice.

"Hazel, look. Do you think he knows Grover or Juniper?"

I looked to where she had been ever-so-slightly gesturing. A man in a tux was standing near the back exit. He had a finger pressing one ear closed, and a phone pressed to his other ear.

First trick of *****Covert Operations (CoveOps): Act natural. Blend in. You belong wherever you don't, and nobody notices. The phone gimmick is the oldest trick in the book. He wasn't really talking to anyone. He had a receiver in his ear and was picking up orders from someone. As far as I knew he didn't work for the government and if he did he would have been sitting with us.

I shook my head. "I'm willing to bet he's armed, though. Don't avoid him, but don't associate too much. I'll tell the others."

Reyna nodded and dragged Leo toward the opposite exit. I smiled and rolled my eyes. Soon enough money would be exchanged to see when and how long they would get together.

The reception was fun. We did our best to avoid the guy we'd seen, and eventually I forgot about him completely. I learned how to do the Wobble from Thalia, because apparently she "rocks at shaking her thang", according to Annabeth.

One of the "slow dances" came on: Crazy Girl, by the Eli Young Band. Our entire office area had been sitting when it first came on. Katie seemed to be flipping out over one of her favorite songs. Alas, Travis was a very dense little boy. Nyssa crossed her arms.

"Travis if you don't go dance with Katie right now then I will."

Katie held out her hand toward him. "Dance with me."

Travis laughed, and the two made their way to the floor. I personally didn't get their joke, but it didn't matter. With every movement, Katie's dark green dress shimmered under the strobe lights. It was like Annabeth's, except it was strapless and had a sequin flower on a brown belt that wrapped around her waist. She looked so pretty.

I felt a tap on my own shoulder. I turned and locked eyes with Frank.

"Would you, um, I mean, will you, uh—"

I smiled and stood up. I knew what he meant. We joined several other couples on the dance floor. I rested my head against his chest and closed my eyes. It was actually peaceful for the moment.

A little kid dropped a plastic fork, and it made a _click_ when it hit the floor. My eyes shot open. The _click_ had sounded like a degraded version of a gun cocking. I was overreacting over a five year old's clumsiness, but my line of business did that to you. It made me remember the guy that was/wasn't supposed to be there. I looked up.

"Hey Frank, see the blonde guy in the corner? He's in a black tux with a black tie."

Frank glanced over and nodded. "He looks uncomfortable. Like he knows something bad is going to happen."

I hadn't thought of it like that. I looked at him again and noticed the crazed look in his blue eyes. At our office, one of the jobs was to analyze motives and responses of criminals once Thalia interrogated them. The only problem was that was Grover's job. _Hey man, just a heads up, we think there's a serial killer at your wedding. No big deal just thought you would want to know. _That would so pass over well.

I looked over to where the guy was, but he was gone. I did a quick head count. Thalia and Nyssa were gone, too. I briefly panicked, until I saw Thalia round the corner to go to the bathroom. It was okay. Nyssa and Thalia were using the buddy system. Smart move when dealing with a creep.

"Does he appear to be armed?" I asked. Frank looked over again.

"Maybe. He does not have a gun, I can tell you that. Experienced gunmen are more relaxed about their work. No promises on tranquilizers or explosives, though. And a matchbox can easily be hidden in a coat pocket."

"It's a wedding. When he got caught he'd have to pay for the damages plus a fine and time in jail, if not execution. Surely if he's working with a professional gang he'd know better than that."

"Not necessarily. And if he's really experienced he thinks he'll never get caught, which is exactly why he chose the wedding of two government operatives."

A sinking feeling tugged at my stomach. I wasn't in the mood for dancing anymore. Crazy Girl ended, and How Do You Sleep by Jesse McCartney came on.

"Come on Grover, we had this talk in eighth grade!" Thalia's voice rose above the music. Everyone started laughing.

"Well it's not your wedding, and I'm not the deejay. Life's not fair, is it?" Grover replied.

I missed having him around at the office. Things certainly weren't quiet or dull; it just wasn't the same without Grover.

We all went out the back doors and lit sparklers. Grover and Juniper ran through the path we made and into a new car, courtesy of our head supervisor (the one above Mr. D.) The couple was gone, off on their honeymoon. Only a half hour left to party.

The deejay stopped the new song, Mistletoe by Justin Bieber. "Hey, we just had an iPhone 5 turned in. Does anyone want to claim it? If not, I'll gladly take it."

"It's mine." Will called out, as he walked to the music booth. He frowned when he got it. "The screen's cracked."

That was red flag number one. Will was so careful with all equipment it was ridiculous. His phone shouldn't have been cracked.

"Check your messages," Piper advised. Will unlocked the phone and began scrolling through his messages.

"Seriously, who's had my phone? I don't even know this number, and I didn't call Nyssa five minutes ago." Will tapped a few more things. "And I didn't take a pitch black video."

If it was quiet in the reception hall before, it was like a cemetery after he said that.

"Where _is _Nyssa?" Travis asked. We all began looking around. The sinking feeling in my stomach plummeted.

"She said she left her phone in my car and went out to get it. Right after Crazy Girl started playing she went out," Will answered.

Willow, Juniper's old roommate, opened the door and stared into the parking lot for a long time.

"I don't see nobody out there," She announced to us.

Realization hit me like a rock. Of course. Nyssa disappeared around the time the mystery guy did.

"Will play the video," I said. Will connected his phone to the projector screen that had been displaying pictures. Thank god only government people and people sworn under oath were present, other than the children who wouldn't remember that night in a month.

It was of Nyssa. I could make out her curly hair and her dress in the shadows. Every now and then I'd caught a flicker of her gorgeous white dress, but that was about it. She was muttering to herself.

"Where did I put my stupid phone? It's not under the seat, or in the cup holders—"

"Nyssa!" A voice called out. Nyssa looked up.

"What?"

"I found your phone. You left it on the table when you went to get a drink."

"Of course I did," Nyssa muttered then spoke up, "thanks, Will! Can you bring it over?"

"Sure."

A few seconds passed. Nyssa's voice picked back up.

"Wait, you're not—"

The video stopped. Even the little kids had stopped running around and were staring at the black screen. Will looked paler than a corpse.

"That wasn't me. I haven't even left the building."

Willow pushed the door open again. "There's an empty parking space and some burned rubber. Oh, and there's an empty cup rolling around in the parking lot."

Annabeth went out and retrieved it. When she came back in, she was holding the small punch cup. There was a grim expression on her face that confirmed my suspicions.

"Lipstick stains. It was definitely Nyssa's."

Of course. It was all too perfect. What better time to kidnap a trained government operative than when she's right under the noses of several others?

**And scene. Sooooooooooo? How'd I do? Could be better, but it could be worse? I don't know. Only you do! **

**Crazy Girl is an AWESOME song. I highly recommend it, even if you don't like "hick trash". I listen to a variety of music so it doesn't bother me, but either way, LISTEN TO IT!**

**I don't own the iPhone 5. Heck I don't even have a phone : ( I also don't own any fireworks (currently) or any of those dresses. If you want to know what all of them looked like, review or PM me and I'll reply or put it in the next chapter's AN. CoveOps belongs to Ally Carter (an AMAZING author). R&R! **


	12. Revealed Secrets

Will POV

My world collapsed. There's really no other way to put it. I barely (if even) slept the night Nyssa was taken. I had woken up the next morning with a pounding sensation in my head, worse than any hangover. I was pathetic.

The search began almost immediately. Jason left the empty punch cup down in the lab with me for an analysis. Heck, I couldn't even use my own phone. Piper was printing out everything that was on there (and when I say everything I mean _everything_.) And then they wanted me to examine my phone and my car to see if there was any other evidence there. I was phoneless and carless. And not to mention Nyssa-less.

I went over the punch cup. Lipstick prints with DNA markings on them. I'd had to get one of the girls to confirm the color, but the lip imprint was definitely Nyssa's.

I heard Thalia yelling at the guy that was arrested when the salon blew up:

"Why on earth would you do something like this? Did you have any idea of how much trouble you would get in? Your mistress said you were experienced enough to not get caught? Who is your mistress?"

Oh, the joys of having an interrogation room above my lab. Percy came down and gave me a few files, since Piper was so busy. I took them and sorted through the information.

The guy Thalia was wasting her voice on was named Ethan Nakamura. Apparently he had a serious disease that would kill him at any moment this year, and wanted to do something memorable in his lifetime. He figured the bomb would kill him, saving himself and others a lot of pain. His suicide/murder plan failed when Percy and Jason cuffed him and brought him to our holding cells.

Hazel's file had information about the guy who kidnapped Nyssa. I decided to wait and look at that one last. I moved on to the next stack; the ones that had come from Annabeth.

The files from Annabeth were really detailed. Apparently she started having weird dreams, sort of like a crystal ball or a prophecy. Our success progressed every night after she slept. Bits and pieces of information would enter her mind.

One of the files from Annabeth made me start choking on air. I recognized one of the girls, and I knew everyone else would. Latina, black hair, matching eyes, fairly tall, around our age…that was Reyna made over. I needed to talk to her immediately.

She would probably be at Dare Manor. That meant seeing Rachel. I would have dragged Thalia with me had she not been squeezing information out of Nakamura. I obviously couldn't have brought Leo. He would have wanted to talk to Reyna, and I needed to do that. Piper and Annabeth were busy as well.

I went upstairs and went to Percy and Jason's office.

"Hey, can either of your spare maybe an hour?"

"Yeah, why?" Jason asked.

"I think I found a lead, but I need someone to go to Dare Manor with me to check it out. You up for it?"

"Sure." Jason stood up and grabbed his phone. We checked in with Hazel and drove off toward Dare Manor.

"What exactly are we doing?" Jason asked me. I could barely focus. I was trying to make sure I didn't go over the speed limit.

"Um, I wanted to ask her friend a few questions."

"Reyna?"

I nodded. I almost missed a turn because I was so distracted.

"I swear she looks familiar. If I could just place it…"

"Hey, which road do I turn on now," I asked. I hadn't meant to interrupt, but I felt very rushed.

"Go left, then keep driving. When you get to Noble, turn and drive all the way down. You'll literally drive straight into their driveway."

I heard something about Noble and going straight into their driveway. It was a huge mansion; surely I couldn't miss it.

It turns out I was right. I didn't miss it. We pulled into the driveway and stopped when a security guard came out to greet us.

"Do you have an appointment with the Mr. or Mrs. Dare?"

I shook my head. "I need to see Rachel and Reyna."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible. After one of their friends disappeared the other night the two girls seem very distressed."

I flinched at the word 'disappeared' and flashed my badge to him. "I'm the missing girl's boyfriend; I was there. They know us."

The guard nodded. "Of course. All I needed was the identification. Proceed."

I would have slammed on the gas had we not been in a driveway.

"So what am I supposed to do while you're talking to Reyna?"

I had almost forgotten Jason had come with me.

"Just keep Rachel occupied. Look over pictures she took from that night to see if you can find anything."

"Got it," Jason replied. I parked the car and we got out.

A butler answered the door. I explained our situation to him, and he let us in. He told us that Miss Dare was in the kitchen. We were in for a shock. Apparently he was quite distracted as well, because he didn't mean Miss Rachel Dare. He meant Mrs. Dare, Rachel's mother.

Mrs. Dare was chatting with a few of her maids while the chef was baking something that smelled delicious. The chef was chopping up some vegetables. Every cut was so precise it was obvious he was a highly trained chef. Mrs. Dare trailed off her sentence when she saw us. She cleared her throat.

"May I help you?"

I was frozen. My mind went blank and I forgot how to speak. Jason came to the rescue.

"Sorry, ma'am. We were looking for Rachel. We were told she was in here."

Mrs. Dare shook her head. "No, quite not. She's in her room."

Jason nodded respectively to her. "Thank you, ma'am. So sorry for the inconvenience."

Jason pulled on my arm, slightly dragging me to the staircase. I snapped to my senses and followed him. We could hear I Know You Want Me: Calle Ocho by Pitbull playing—excuse me, blaring through the door. I knocked on the door.

"Who is it?" It was Reyna's voice. That was a good sign.

"Will and Jason. Can we come in," Jason called through the door.

"Yeah," Rachel yelled back. I opened the door and both of us went in.

"What's up?"

Rachel was laying on her bed in yellow jean shorts and a white tank top. She was holding the latest issue of _Seventeen_. Reyna was doing one of those Zumba workouts on Rachel's 62" TV. That explained Calle Ocho. She was wearing maroon gym shorts and a black tank top.

"We think we found a lead, but we're not sure. I wanted to take a look at the pictures from the wedding to see if I could find any evidence. Meanwhile, if you don't mind, Will had a few questions for Reyna," Jason explained.

I nodded in agreement. Reyna finished her song and grabbed a water bottle. She began chugging it as the two of us went into an office.

"You wanted me," Reyna asked. I nodded.

"Yeah. Okay, how long have you known Rachel?"

Reyna drummed her fingers on the desk. "About five years or so. We were instantly friends when we realized how much we had in common."

"Like what?"

"Well, as you know, Mr. Dare is an extremely successful businessman. Mrs. Dare has her own makeup line and is a well-known socialite. The Dares have also supplied most of the East Coast colleges with sorority and fraternity houses. With their work occupying their time, that excludes Rachel from the picture.

My mom is stationed overseas as a general of the army. Even in the States we have to call her by her alias: Bella. My dad was overseas, too. He went into the air force. Their base had been attacked, and he and a few of his friends were the only ones that got out. They got into their plane and my dad got to the pilot's seat. Their options were to flay kamikaze straight through enemy territory or take their chances with a dark sky. They chose to fly through the storm. Lightning struck the plane and killed them all. So neither of our parents really have time for us."

That story nearly crushed me. I had grown up in a similar scenario, but at least my mom had time for me.

"How do you feel about that?"

Reyna's expression darkened. "Mistreated. Misunderstood. Heartbroken. They started accusing my mother of horrible things. Witchcraft, if you can believe. Spying for the enemy and making sure no one got out alive. They de-promoted her of her rankings and made her start all over. They said I was the reason the plane went down. They said I was a _Diablo_, a she-demon straight from the pits of Hell. I was tossed around from family member to family member, but I never stayed very long.

My aunt CeCe finally took me in. She said no child should have to live like that. She brought me up like I was her own daughter. Aunt CeCe taught me all of her skill and knowledge as a nurse. She even taught me songs from a country she had briefly lived in. My favorite one was about a child not being able to sleep at night, and finally succeeded in sleeping by remembering the ones he loved.

One day a girl in my class at school came in, unable to sleep because of pounding headaches. Aunt CeCe told her to remember the ones she loved and to drink one of her remedies. The girl objected, saying her mother hated her and the rest of her family was dead. Nevertheless Aunt CeCe told the girl to trust her. The next morning the girl was found dead. Her mother was truly heartbroken, because the girl had gone around all night possessed by demons and evil spirits.

Her family had died because they were criminals. They were all executed painfully for their crimes. They believed Aunt CeCe tricked the girl into going mad and committing suicide. The girl's mother turned Aunt CeCe in to the authorities. Aunt CeCe was arrested and executed for witchcraft. I couldn't believe my aunt had been a sorceress. They took us away and sent us here, to America. We were split up."

Reyna had tears in her eyes. "Will, they called us murderers. In several countries I have family members who are wanted or have been put on death row for things we haven't done. I do not come from a family of murderers. I am not a killer!"

I had never said she was. I could tell several people put her at the top of their suspect lists, though. I felt compassion for that girl. She put on a tough girl image, and softened it up with pretending to be a crazy young adult. Underneath all of that was a scared little girl who was wanted in several countries. Reyna had her head in her hands now, tears falling down her face slowly, as if she was refusing to cry.

"Reyna, you said 'They sent _us_ to America'. Who's _us_?"

Reyna didn't reply for a while. Then she spoke up. "I say it out of habit. When I was younger no one wanted to be seen with me so I created imaginary friends. I told my best imaginary friend, Gwen, everything. We were "magically" separated when we made it to Ellis Island."

That was so easy to believe. It was such a sad story it would have ripped my heart out and thrown it away. It would have done that had it not been so easy to believe. Rule #385 of Spy School: If it's easy to believe, it was easily made up. They didn't call me the Lie Detector for no reason. I knew Gwen was probably made up on the spur of the moment. She meant a different _us_.

"Is there anything normal or good that happened in your life? Like, friends, vacations, things like that?"

Reyna nodded and lifted her head from her hands. "_Si._ I met Rachel, and she completely changed my life. The Dares took me in after they heard my story. Every year they pay for me to meet up with my mom in Black Diamond. And of course, I met Leo."

Had it been just me, or was Reyna _blushing_? I decided not to ask. There was a chill I couldn't shake, though. Black Diamond.

"When do you get to go to Black Diamond?"

"Once a week every fall. I only returned about two weeks ago."

Two weeks ago. Around the time we found the body of the guy that had the tetrodotoxin. Reyna even fit the description of the suspect. Was I alone in a locked room with a vicious murderer with a claim that she's innocent?

"I got to go for the first time this year. It's a nice place," I casually commented. Reyna nodded.

"Definitely. Hey, not that it's any of my business, but have you gotten anything on who killed Irene?"

I had nearly forgotten about the Dare's dead maid and missing jewels. But I did have a small lead.

"Yeah. Do you think Mrs. Dare would allow us access to all of their security camera footage from the last week or so?"

Reyna nodded. "Oh, _si_. Come on." She motioned for me to follow her.

We went back into the kitchen. The chef was still slicing away at veggies.

"Where's Mrs. Dare," Reyna asked him.

"In the living room," He replied. Reyna dragged me out before I could at least tell him thanks.

"Mama Dare! They think they have a lead on who broke in. Do we still have the footage from like the last week?"

"Of course, you know where it is. The key is outside the door. Now hush, my movie is on."

It was one of those Lifetime movies; a chick flick, a sob story, whatever you want to call it. I rolled my eyes. Reyna fake-gagged herself when Mrs. Dare had turned back around. I stifled a laugh and we went back down the hallway. Reyna grabbed a key off of a small rack and unlocked what I had assumed was a closet.

It definitely wasn't a closet.

It was a huge room filled with hi-tech computers and gadgets I had no idea even existed. There were a few computer geeks running around, clicking on several files.

"Miss Reyna, what can I do for you?" One of the computer geeks rushed over.

"I need the footage from last week."

Reyna's tone was so authoritative I felt the need to get on one of those computers and look for the files myself. Less than two minutes later the same guy came back with a small disc.

"Here you are."

"Thank you, Michael."

Reyna took the disc and we walked back to Rachel's room.

"So Reyna, do you have any siblings?"

I was treading in dangerous waters. I could feel it. Reyna was hesitant to reply.

"Yes. A sister." She opened the door to Rachel's bedroom, signaling that my audience with her was over. Rachel and Jason were staring at Rachel's computer screen.

"What," I asked, peering over Rachel's shoulder. I saw _the picture_.

Our suspect was sitting a few tables behind where Nyssa and I had been sitting. We were a blur because the focus was set on him. Straw blonde hair, blue eyes with a maniacal glint to them. Just by looking at his eyes I could tell he was cold to the core. I noticed a small rip in his coat pocket, and a small brown rectangle.

Of course. That's why we hadn't noticed a gun on him. He was armed with a knife.

**Dun-dun-duuuuuuuuuuuuuun! Another member of the murderous gang has been revealed! Why is Reyna acting so strangely? Who is the real **_**us**_**? Keep reading to find out! R&R/F&F!**


	13. Meeting The Gods

Nico POV  
To say I was fed up was the understatement of the millennium. I had had it with this gang of psychos who thought it was fun to kill people and steal from them and kidnap cops. It was not cool, cute, funny, a joke, none of that. It was just downright irritating.

It was _that _day. The day that comes twice a year: meeting day. Cops on our branch of service and the people above us all gathered in this gigantic meeting room and we held a "court meeting". The arguments were pretty hectic, but it was worth it to see what people would say.

The identities of the people above us were so confidential we weren't allowed to know them. So, of all things to pick from, they chose to go by the names of Greek gods. They claimed it was "to make things simpler on us". I personally think it had only made it harder for us.

Hermes was calling roll. Everyone was present, so the meeting came to order. Annabeth started it off with our side of the story. She stood and walked to the center of the meeting area. She was completely surrounded by people. Annabeth began her presentation with a calm air. I could see why they picked her from law school to come work with us.

"Recently there was a murder down in Black Diamond, Florida. Do we have confirmation on how the victim might have died?" Annabeth looked to Will.

"Tetrodotoxin."

"We believe our victim has passed away due to a tetrodotoxin. Do we have any further information of the tetrodotoxin?"

Will nodded. "Tetrodotoxins are poisons that cause one's body to slowly numb until it can no longer function. That includes breathing, seeing, talking, moving, the likes. In our victim the infected vein was black, and the other veins have small specks of black in them. The infected vein started in the brain and carried straight to the heart before dispersing into several other veins."

"Tetrodotoxins come from puffer fish," Poseidon pointed out. "It seems highly unlikely that a human could die of a toxin found in an aquatic species."

"Unless one was to consume an improperly prepared puffer fish. Am I correct, Thalia?"

Thalia nodded. Will continued his background information.

"According to the victim's would-be bride, his last meal had, in fact, been seafood. It has a possibility of being puffer fish." Will let Annabeth take over after that.

"There is a strong likelihood that the victim had passed on because of probable deliberate poisoning to his meal. Shortly after that incident, we received a call from Miss Rachel Dare, daughter of businessman William Dare and cosmetics professional Ariel Dare. She is being severely bullied, in person and through cyberspace. We investigated and decided to label the case as cyberbullying, nothing more. The tables turned when one of the Dare's most trusted maids Irene Rosedale was murdered."

During that Annabeth had been pacing around in the omega-shaped table. Our bosses were really playing into the Greek theme. Annabeth turned on her heel.

"After that happened we were all greatly distressed. A new angle to the case had been created. As you may see, one of our operatives, Grover Underwood, is not present. He is currently enjoying a honeymoon. Little does he know that after he and his bride left the wedding, our other operative, Nyssa Martinez, was kidnapped.

We think it may be in revenge of arresting enemy operative Ethan Nakamura from the late Silena Beauregard's salon. Nakamura and another woman were there on a mission to retrieve a disc from Silena and blow her shop to bits. We got hold of the disc and Nakamura, thanks to operatives Jason Grace, Percy Jackson, and Nyssa Martinez. When the shop blew no bystanders were injured, but Miss Beauregard and the female intruder were in the shop when it went down.

The enemy is very aware that we have successfully gotten rid of two of their agents and the disc that they were so intent on searching for. Any further incidents can only be related to them getting their hands on this disc and obliterating our agency."

"How are you so sure these cases are connected," Athena asked.

"It's quite simple. I believe that the victim of the tetrodotoxin had that disc in his possession, with or without knowing what was on it. He was mistaken for one of us and disposed of at the will of our enemy. A female operative must have been the one to murder the man. After she did her dirty work she went to go alter her appearance at Silena Beauregard's salon.

She made the fatal mistake of leaving the disc behind. Silena must have known what it was on the disc, due to her hesitance to hand the disc over. Operative Nyssa Martinez was the one who ensured all bystanders were evacuated and even saw that Miss Beauregard had left the premises. Operative Martinez made sure the female agent was inside the salon when it blew.

Dare Manor was broken into during this time period. Operative Levesque, what was reported missing?"

"Three million dollars in diamonds," Hazel replied. I gave her a quick reassuring grin. We all trusted her authority, and Annabeth was on a roll. We had our case in the bag.

"Three million dollars in diamonds went missing from the Dare's safe. It was reported that only a few staff members were home at the time. I believe the criminals wanted Mr. Dare's support by forging aliases and requesting certain equipment at their disposal. If he refused to cooperate, they could always get their hands on Rachel.

When Mr. Dare refused his help, they broke in to kidnap Rachel and possibly her friend Reyna Gonzales. The only problem is neither girl was home. Only their attendant Irene Rosedale. Irene stood her ground and would not reveal where the girls were. So they disposed of Irene and made off with the money to purchase the equipment on their own.

Following that event at Operative Underwood's wedding one of the enemy operatives appeared to see if anyone would mention what we knew to him. And then he spotted Operative Nyssa Martinez. By then their entire agency was bound to know who she is and what she looks like. It was the perfect chance to exact their revenge. And they did so."

Annabeth bowed her head as a signal she had finished and returned to her seat. I didn't think she realized how much power she possessed. Her points were in order, she had a strong case that made sense, and she spoke it so confidently it was as if she had written a script and was explaining it to the cast.

"Based on your data who do you think is the next target? What is the enemy's next motive?"

Demeter had a point. Jason stood up to make his statement.

"They'll obviously keep looking for us. With their disc still MIA they'll be alert to everything we do. They'll go to buy the equipment they need for whatever they're planning. They'll use Operative Martinez as a pawn to get to us. We'll probably receive threats that they may or may not carry out."

"They'll also eventually realize that Operative Martinez does not have the disc and probably had no idea that it escaped the explosion. What will they do with her?"

Artemis's question rang throughout the building. We let the idea sink in. I felt the same chill as I had whenever we discovered Irene. I cold feeling in my gut, a sensation I couldn't place but I knew meant danger. Bad things would happen if we didn't act fast. Artemis continued.

"That's my point exactly. I'm not sure about much of what's been said, but I do know that there is supposed to be a total of thirteen operatives present, not counting Operative Underwood's excused absence. I refuse to stand by while a fellow operative is being held hostage by our greatest enemy in the past four years."

"Technically they couldn't bring three million dollars in diamonds out of the country. They wouldn't spend a percent of that just to buy their own air travel and to take care of air traffic. They'll probably go through an ordinary airport. From there they couldn't just waltz onto a plane with bags overflowing with precious jewels," Apollo tried to change to subject.

"Diamonds and chocolate are a universal language. I'll bet they'll go to the powerful women they can find for support and investments," Aphrodite announced.

"Or they could condense and conceal the amounts of diamonds they carry at a time," Piper carried on.

"The easiest way to do that would be through jewelry—" Katie began.

"And the nearest shop that does things like that would be Queen Marie's. Which means that Queen Marie's is a likely next target," Travis finished.

Zeus began calling out orders.

"I want your teams to split up. Someone monitor Dare Manor's live footage, and someone stay with Rachel Dare and her friend at all times. Someone go to Queen Marie's, and block all possible exits. I want the tetrodotoxin victim to be brought here for further research, and I specifically want Will to come take a look at the Dares' dead maid." Will followed Apollo toward the body examination labs. I admired how he did that day after day without puking his guts out.

"Where is the disc," Zeus continued.

Percy held up the disc.

"Hand the disc to your computer technician and have them report to the lab. Find out what on that disc is so important to the enemy," Zeus boomed. Percy handed Annabeth the disc. Annabeth gingerly accepted it and stood to follow Hermes to the computer room.

After Zeus shut up, Jason took over.

"I want Thalia and Nico monitoring Dare Manor. Leo and Frank, stay with Rachel and Reyna. Percy and I will go to Queen Marie's, and I want Piper on the exits. Katie, Travis, go to our building. Get all of our hard drives and plug them into the computers. We need several copies of all of our information, and we need you to monitor Nakamura. See if you can get any more information out of him."

Jason surveyed us and looked distressed. He faced the "gods".

"We need more people."

Ares called in a few other operatives. I recognized Jake Mason, Clarisse La Rue, and Chris Rodriguez and a few others— all operatives that had upgraded from our position to upper-grade operatives. Jason nodded in approval.

"Operative La Rue, come with my group to Queen Marie's. Block any secondary exits. Rodriguez, bring the victim's body from our office back here. Mason, try and finish the product on Valdez's desk. What's the code, Leo?"

"Code 17, Activate. Defeat Titanium," Leo replied.

"There you have it. Pilots, get your aircrafts and occasionally fly over Dare Manor and Queen Marie's to see if backup is needed. Everyone else, keep track of our progress. Make sure our plans are foolproof, and do not under any circumstances let the enemy sneak up on us. Code Black is the key word."

Thalia and I dashed for the parking lot. We got into her car and sped to Dare Manor. I crawled into the backseat and stuck a sticker in our window—a red cross, as a symbol we were with the cops, so we weren't pulled over. Thalia was doing at least ninety miles per hour. I grabbed the emergency siren and slapped it onto the top of the vehicle. People were swerving out of our way like madmen. The thirty minute ride to Dare Manor lasted about ten minutes.

Thalia didn't bother to knock. We barged straight in. I followed Thalia upstairs. Thalia opened a door to what looked like a penthouse suite and frowned. She opened another door and found a maid cleaning off a dresser top. The maid dropped her duster; startled at our appearance.

I flashed her my badge. "Where are the girls?"

"In the garden—"

We cut the maid off by running out of the room. I nearly killed myself trying not to fall off of the staircase. Thalia slammed open a pair of French doors. The Dare's garden was _huge_. Like, Rachael Ray and Martha Stewart would be jealous of how green the gardener's thumb must have been.

There were rows and rows of various plants and trees. Garden gnomes and other statues were placed at random. We would never find the girls.

"RACHEL!"

Thalia unleashed her voice. She was almost as powerful as Katie and "Zeus" when it came to yelling.

"IT'S THALIA! COME ON!"

Some leaves rustled. Reyna and Rachel walked around the end of the row, holding baskets of fruits and veggies. My stomach growled as I realized I hadn't gotten to eat lunch.

"Hey Thalia, what's up?" Rachel seemed so calm it was hard to register it.

"No time, we need to get to your room. Now."

"Why," Reyna asked, thoroughly confused. "We've told you everything we know."

"That's the problem. We'll explain when we get up," I replied.

The four of us raced back up the staircase. Thalia locked the French doors and snapped at some maids on break to lock the doors and windows.

We went into Rachel's suite—excuse me, room— and locked the door. I turned to Rachel.

"How secure are your windows?"

"Bulletproof, with blinds and curtains," Rachel told me.

"Perfect, do those please?"

Reyna flopped down on Rachel's bed. Rachel joined her after situating her window. She crossed her arms and locked eyes with me.

"Alright, we're secure. What the heck is going on?"

"We have several leads on where the enemy is coming next. They'll either come to kidnap you two, or they'll go to hijack Queen Marie's."

Reyna put her face in a pillow. "You cannot be serious."

Her words were muffled, but I could tell what she meant. Thalia nodded.

"Rachel, do you have any easily accessible valuable jewelry?"

Rachel's expression was priceless. "What kind of a question is that?"

"Life or death, now do you?"

Rachel considered the question, and then nodded. "Depends on what country you mean, but in the U.S., yes. I have an emerald necklace and some diamond earrings."

"Where," I asked.

"Right here." Rachel went over to her enormous vanity and opened a box. Sure enough, in a secret compartment there was the jewelry she described.

If Rachel had valuable jewelry right there in Dare Manor and the criminals knew about it, they would have _definitely_ gone after the girls. Reyna lifted her head from the pillow.

"Hey Rach, what about the other stuff?"

Rachel set the jewelry box down. "She asked if I had any easily accessible valuable jewelry. The other stuff isn't easily accessible."

"What other stuff," I asked.

Rachel went over to her wall and moved aside a One Direction poster. She pressed her finger up to the wall, and the wall glowed green. Instead of opening up a secret passage or anything cool like that, the wall made a huge version of a pass code. Sort of like on Apple products that are locked, where it has the numbers set up in Tic-Tac-Toe formation.

Rachel took out a keypad and began tapping in numbers. A red laser popped out to do a retinal scan. After that the wall slid apart like a jigsaw puzzle.

The pastel pink room was lined with white rows and racks of several pricey jewels. Thalia was gaping at the sight, and that's saying something, since Thalia could ordinarily care less about jewelry. Rachel entered in several other passwords for around three minutes. Finally she gave us the okay to go in.

We all split up and began looking at all of the jewelry. I just looked at the selection nearest to me, quartz, since I wasn't really interested in jewelry. Thalia made a beeline for some obsidian black earrings, and Rachel began scanning over her selection of rubies. Reyna went to the far side of the room.

"Hey, Rach," Reyna sounded troubled.

"Yeah, Rey?"

"Not to freak you out or anything, but where's your raindrop necklaces?"

I had no idea what a raindrop necklace was. Obviously Rachel did. She frowned.

"They're not out?"

"No, believe me, I'm the only one that ever wears them and they're not here."

Thalia set the earrings back and went to go investigate. I walked away from the quartz and joined her and Rachel.

Sure enough there was a whole wall of empty cases. They were all labeled and everything— ruby, sapphire, emerald, diamond, 24 karat gold, quartz, you name it, it was there. Or rather, not there.

Rachel seemed panicked. She flipped around the ruby sign and showed us a picture of a ruby raindrop necklace. It was a bunch of rubies on a gold chain making an upside down pyramid.

"All of these necklaces were like this, but made with their own jewel. Each one was worth five-hundred grand easy, and that's in U.S. money."

So the criminals _had_ gotten into Rachel's stash. If each one was worth around five-hundred grand and there were twenty of them, plus the three million missing in diamonds, that bumped the price up to thirteen million dollars missing. I shared my revelation with the girls.

My phone beeped, signaling a text message. I pulled it out. It was one of the pilots checking in on us: The windows are dark, is everything okay?

I replied: They're dark for security, but we're not okay. We found $10 million missing in Rachel Dare's jewelry. What about QM's?

The pilot responded quickly: Nothing yet. QM and her employees are aware of what's going on and they know how to get out.

I reported the good news to the girls. Reyna sighed in relief.

"Well at least there's something good happening."

She spoke too soon. The pilot messaged me not even two seconds after Reyna said that: They're in QM's.

**QM's is Queen Marie's, for anyone who was wondering. **

**CHRISTMAS BREAK! WOOHOO! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!**

**Okay…I told you guys my sister was better…she's in the ER right now. *Sigh*. Keep her in your prayers. **

**I feel so guilty. A loooooong while back someone reviewed asking if they knew about their powers or if they were demigods or anything. If it's not obvious by now, no, they are not demigods in this story. However their demigodly gifts are sort of a sixth sense for them. **

**R&R F&F and Have A Happy New Year! **

**THE WORLD DID NOT END! BOOM. I FEEL AWESOME!**


	14. Oh Snap

Percy POV

They were in. The same guy that crashed Grover's wedding showed up at Queen Marie's. We had Queen Marie and her staff to evacuate the building. Piper –practically the goddess of convincing—persuaded one of the local cops to pretend to work there.

Piper pretended to check out some clearance necklaces near the front entrance, and Clarisse scanned over earrings in the back. I was supposed to be covering the right side. I looked at an owl necklace decorated with small diamonds. Apparently Annabeth has this liking for things owl-related, and I was still looking for something to give her for Christmas. Time was running out, since Christmas was only a few weeks away. Jason went to cover the left side—engagement rings.

Other than our small cop force and the one villain, the store was completely empty. I supposed that was lucky for us, considering anyone could and would get hurt.

The guy walked up to the counter and got the attention of the "sales associate" (cop), Ella.

"Excuse me, miss, do you handcraft any of your jewelry?"

Ella nodded eagerly. "That's one of the things our company prides ourselves in. You give us a ruby, and we'll give you earrings for a decreased price. Decreased because you supplied your own jewel and gave us business. Global warming needs to be decreased. So do taxes and gas prices. The fiscal cliff is bad."

The guy nodded, ignoring Ella's rambling. "So do you do anything with diamonds?"

Ella nodded like a bobblehead. I turned away from them and silently laughed. She was really playing up to Kinzie's part.

"Diamonds are our specialty. They're very valuable. And they're the hardest substance on Earth, did you know that? Human thigh bones are pretty hard too; as strong as concrete! Diamonds are admired by little children, as shown in a very popular nursery rhyme."

"That's nice—"

"It's called Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Ella began singing incredibly off-key. "_Twinkle, twinkle little star; how I wonder what you are?_"

"I know how the song goes—"

"_Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle little star; how I wonder what you are?" _

Ella barely took a breath before launching back into her extreme ADD zone.

"And teenagers like diamonds too. Do you know who Rihanna is? She likes diamonds. _Shine bright like a diamond. _Oh, and Miranda Lambert was in the Pistol Annies. Not like the orphan Annie, but the country singers. _This diamond ring on my hand is the only good thing that came from that man_. They claim to be Hell on heels."

Ella cocked her head in his direction. "Did you want something?"

"Yes, can you please put these diamonds into several articles of jewelry? I have people to impress, and they're not very patient."

He handed Ella a small sack of diamonds. Ella shook the bag. It was obvious to us that she had no idea how to make anything with a diamond. Jason saved her.

"Excuse me, ma'am, how much is this ring?" The ring had a gold band with small diamonds in it, and one diamond in the middle.

Ella jumped back into character. "Oh, it's not very expensive. That's an unpopular model because women these days think it's too plain, and it's on clearance. I'll make you a deal. Name your price."

"Hundred."

Ella shook her head. "Too high. Clearance price is $103. Three dollars isn't a deal. Three is a magical number. You get three wishes from a genie. Four times three is twelve, and there are twelve months in a year. Three is the first number in 365 and there are 365 days in most years. There were the Big Three gods in mythology—Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades."

"Or Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto," Jason agreed. Ella beamed.

"That's Roman. Name a better price, child of Rome."

I snickered. Child of Rome. A new nickname he shall never live down.

"Alright, sixty."

Ella shook her head. "Too low. You're trying to cheat me now. Your father Jupiter wouldn't approve. Mercury perhaps, but not Jupiter. I say ninety."

"Too high. Seventy."

The criminal interrupted. "Excuse me, but you were making some jewelry?"

"He's been here longer. You can wait," Ella brushed him off and focused on Jason. "Eighty dollars."

"Seventy-five. Final price."

Ella threw her hands in the air. "Sold! I knew you were good!"

"Thank you." Jason paid Ella in Monopoly money. The look on the criminal's face was priceless.

"That's fake money! It may as well be counterfeit!"

"No, this money is very real. See?" Ella shoved a pink Monopoly dollar in his face.

"Will you please get to making the jewelry now? I'm on a tight schedule."

"Going someplace," Ella asked.

"Paris. And my flight is booked for in an hour, and I have a twenty minute drive to the airport."

"Oh, the city of love! That's so sweet! Are you suicidal? If you are, I wouldn't recommend the Eiffel Tower. That drop would kill anyone."

"I'm not suicidal! Make me the jewelry _now_."

Ella held up her hands in surrender. "Goodness gracious, so pushy. Come right this way, and I'll make you the jewelry."

Ella led him to the back of the store toward where Clarisse was positioned. I motioned for Jason to cover where I was, and I moved up to the topaz selection. I couldn't see the front of the store from where I was at, so I hoped Jason could. Piper definitely could, but backup was crucial.

I could hear Ella jabbering to the suspect, with Clarisse butting in every now and then. She had, thankfully, caught onto our game. The criminal leaned up against a nearby shelf and watched Ella carefully pour out all of the diamonds. He stretched and what I saw proved me right. There was a knife in his pocket. I caught Clarisse's eye and motioned for her to get Ella out of the store.

"Hey lady, how much are those diamonds worth?"

"We can go to the scale and figure it out!" Ella put the diamonds back into the bag.

"But they're mine," the criminal interjected.

"And she asked a question. Come on," Ella pulled the both of them to the front of the store. The criminal withdrew.

"No. You go on, I'll stay here."

"Okay," Ella chirped. She and Clarisse went to the front of the store. I walked around a cart of topaz and got a better view. Definitely a knife.

"Hey," I said, "what do you have there?"

"Nothing," the guy replied. He held his hands up to show me. I shook my head.

"No, I mean in your pocket. Are you authorized to be carrying that?"

His expression darkened. "Look pal, I don't mean nobody no harm. I just need to get out of here."

"No harm? Except to Rachel Dare and her family. Isn't that right?"

"Get off my case. That wasn't me."

I ignored him and kept pressing. "Sure it wasn't. Operatives don't do two jobs in a row. You kidnapped Nyssa and now you're exchanging in the diamonds for smaller amounts. Easier to get out of the country, right?"

His crazed blue eyes widened in what was a mixture of shock and fear, with rage mixed in. Then he bolted for the door.

I pushed a case aside. "Jason stop him!"

I saw my partner grab at the fleeing criminal. The two began struggling with each other. I went to go help, but then realized that a tile was moving out of the ceiling. Someone else was trying to get in.

I jumped on top of the nearest desk and pulled it back shut. The person on the other side began beating on it. Just to irritate whoever it was I began hitting back. I looked over to the door area.

"Piper did they get out?"

"_Oui_." There were several thuds after she said that. And _oui_? Why was she speaking French? I saw a completely blackened figure fighting Piper. The footing, the techniques, and the reactions to Piper's swings clearly stated Piper was fighting a female. I heard a thud to the side. I looked over just in time to see Jason and his opponent fly through the emergency exit.

The tile started to slide open again. I saw a flash of blonde hair. I slammed it shut and held it there. Minutes later it became easier to hold. The invader had gone away. I slid the tile back all the way and hoisted myself up into the vents just to check. There was nobody up there. I lowered back down and sealed it off.

Jason came back into the store. His face was red and he seemed out of breath. Other than a few scrapes and places where there would obviously be bruises, he seemed to be okay. I jumped off of the desk and walked over to him.

"Clarisse and Ella got out before this started. He get away?"

Jason nodded. "At least he didn't get the diamonds."

"They were at the front of the store."

Jason's face fell even more, and I didn't think it was possible until that moment. "With Piper."

That cleared it up. Both of us sprinted to the front of the store. The register where the diamonds had been was empty of diamonds. Piper was gone. A sickening feeling settled in my stomach. I didn't even want to think about what it was doing to Jason. It was like I could see his life flashing through his eyes.

I tried to keep my cool and take charge. "We should, um, probably head to, ah, Rachel's."

Jason nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Sure."

Neither of us said anything the entire ride to the Dares'. How could we? I was driving and thinking at twenty gazillion miles per hour (shocking, I know).

Why was Piper's disappearance so hard on Jason? I mean, sure, they went to the wedding together, and she named the GPS. But seriously, it's not like it's their kid or something; it's a GPS!

When we got to Dare Manor we found the girls and Nico upstairs in some huge secret compartment. I told the four of them what happened at the store. Thalia started flipping out, and Nico went all silent-treatment on us. Rachel put her hands over her mouth all dramatic-like, and Reyna punched the glass out of an empty jewelry container.

"Guys, I have to tell you something," Reyna announced.

"We're listening." Thalia nodded. Reyna sighed.

"A while back when Will and Jason came over here, Will asked if I had any siblings. I told him I had a sister. I didn't go into much detail about her, but I think it's important to now. Jason knows; older sisters are everything to the younger sibling. They're idols, role models, and they're so fun to irritate.

They're also a confidant. When all of this drama started I began spilling to my sister. It got to the point where we'd arrange meetings in public when we were all together and she could identify you guys by the descriptions I gave her. Sometimes we go to talk and she knows things I've never told her. She knew Grover and Juniper were getting married, she knew Nyssa was kidnapped, and she knew you arrested that one guy.

I think I may have been leaking information to her, and because she knows so much she's been getting higher positions in the enemy agency. It started off small: breaking into your office when no one was supposed to be there. It's grown into kidnapping your operatives. Judging by what you've told us I think she was the one that kidnapped Piper today."

Silence filled the room when she finished her revelation. A wave of questions crashed over me. She had been leaking information? Her sister was the reason Piper was gone? Her sister was a criminal? What was her name? What did she look like?

"I'm really, really sorry. I didn't even think about the possibility until a few days ago. Rachel and I were channel-surfing, and this one point kept sticking out. Some Disney re-run was on and the theme song was like 'everything is not what it seems'. A prime-time movie had some guy pointing a gun at another guy, and he said 'You need to prioritize who you trust what with'.

And then we decided to watch Mean Girls, and we got to the part where Regina lied to Cady about putting in a good word for Cady with Regina's ex—I'm rambling, sorry—and she asks 'Why would she do that?'. My point is I figured it out and was very high-strung when Will started interrogating me. I'm really sorry."

I surprised myself by talking. "You had no way of knowing. It's okay. You could actually make our situation better. Start feeding them false information. But make it believable. Meanwhile we're going to need Google translate and a private jet. Rachel can you hook us up with the jet?"

"Totally, where to?" Rachel pulled out her cell phone.

"Paris. You might want to grab a movie or four. Jason, go get Leo and Frank from the driveway. Thalia, message Annabeth and the others and tell them to meet us at the airport. Nico, ask if the agency can send in guards to watch Nakamura. No, don't ask—tell them to send people in. If they get mad at you, I'll take the blame. But we _have _to get to Paris as soon as possible."

"Why Paris," Reyna asked.

"Simple. The criminal guy that went to trade in the diamonds told us he had a flight in an hour for Paris. That hour is almost up. We need to go."

I got excited. I won't lie; it was really thrilling feeling like you knew all of the answers in the world. For the first time in my life I understood why Annabeth loved her job so much. Heck, I understood why women insisted on being right all of the time. The feeling was amazing!

Ten minutes later our little cop posse was congregated at the airport. Rachel was yelling at someone over the phone a few feet away, and in the meantime we were standing around awkwardly. Rachel hung up and came back over to us.

"Plane's in the back. Let's go."

We got onto Rachel's jet and—God have mercy—let Leo fly it. Rachel claimed the co-pilot's seat. The girls forced us into the back because the front of the plane had better movie reception. I couldn't believe they were choosing Pitch Perfect over us picture-perfect men.

Travis claimed to have something better. He pulled out his Mac and started pulling up several pages. When he turned them around I saw what he meant. The agency agreed to back us up on our little French detour as long as we used sources as needed.

Sources like: Piper's best friend Lacy and her brother Mitchell (who were both fluent in French and currently in France), Google translate (I so told them), the French government (our allies), the doorman at the Charles de Gaulle French airport (retired operative), the ginger waitress at the coffee shop nearest to the Eiffel Tower (American spy undercover), and one more secret operative.

The flight was going to be a long one. We established that after the first half hour when: Leo and Reyna had already fought in Spanish (with Leo piloting the plane), we guys started a poker tournament over the little packets of peanuts on the jet, and the girls discovered Anna Kendrick's cup trick. No, we decided it would be a long trip after Katie attempted to _teach_ all of the girls the cup trick.

Seven hours later when we got close to Paris I had discovered several things. Travis was the king of poker, I sucked at poker, Fat Amy's real name is Fat Patricia, and we had done no real work of any kind on the flight to Paris. The girls had managed to squeeze in Vampires Suck, Pitch Perfect, The Breakfast Club, She's The Man, and an hour of Truth or Dare. And we still had a half hour to fly.

We decided to actually plan what we would do once we landed. The first order of business would be to find Piper's friends. Then we'd need to set up our equipment in an inconspicuous place to track down the criminals. Then we needed to locate the nearest jewelry shop, explain what was going on, and go through with the plan we did at Queen Marie's. Meanwhile Rachel would get a pilot to fly the plane around France just to get an aerial view. We'd split up and take care of our usual jobs after that point.

There was still a good fifteen minutes left after that. The majority voted for naptime. I was pleased when Annabeth kicked Will out of his seat just so she could use me as a pillow. Of course, if you ever tell anyone that I will hunt you down and kill you.

I was almost disappointed when Leo told us we had reached Paris. There was more ground to cover than we had imagined on the plane. I faced the crowd I was apparently leading.

"Okay, new plan. I want Hazel and Travis looking for the jewelry store. Katie, contact the agency and give them a report. After that help those two. Nico and Thalia, try and find Lacy and Mitchell. Here are their papers. Rachel, Reyna, do these people know you?"

"Know and worship. Her dad built the new mall," Reyna replied.

"Perfect. Go on a shopping spree and make sure they know who you are—more importantly, who Daddy is. Frank and Jason will be following for security purposes. You two are our distraction crew. Make sure no one pays attention to us. I want Will and Leo scouting out the area for enemy agents. Annabeth and I—Annabeth what's the creepy look on your face?"

Annabeth held up her phone. "This is a message from _my mother_. She believes she figured out what home videos are on that _DVD_." That was code for _Hey I know what's on the disc_.

"After ten years I would hope so. Those were precious moments of your childhood."

Sometimes Thalia got on my last nerve, and sometimes she proved herself to be helpful. That was one of those times she'd proved herself helpful. In the middle of an airport she just turned a random sentence into a lovely private discussion.

I continued. "Right. Annabeth and I will contact her _mother_ to learn what is on that _family_ disc." I surveyed our group. We needed someone who knew their way around France like the back of their hand. I told that to our group.

"I can do it."

I shook my head. "No Travis, I need you to help the girls locate the jewelry store."

"Think again."

I had no idea of what Travis meant by that until I looked up. Travis was standing in front of me. The voice was coming from behind me. I turned around. Travis—no, not Travis— was standing there, holding out a hand.

"U.S. Agent Connor Stoll, at your service."

"Connor? You got a _job_?" Travis seemed more in disbelief over the fact that Connor was employed than the fact that Connor claimed to be related to him.

"Several internationally. Egyptian food vendor, Canadian tour guide, Italian dog walker, Japanese scribe, Chinese basket weaver, and more."

Katie crossed her arms. "So do you do anything useful?"

Connor faced Katie and pointed a finger at her knowingly. "And you must be Miss Katie Gardner. I don't know whether to be frightened or charmed to finally meet you."

"Drop the act. If you're anything like your brother you want nothing more than to yell at me over why Luke Skywalker is obviously better for entertainment than Luke Bryan."

Connor visibly relaxed, and then sighed in relief. "Oh thank God you guys are normal. The last group Zeus sent me to work with…yikes."

I took charge again. "Great, so Connor, can you guide a few of our groups around Paris?"

"Can I? Of course I can! I practically live in France."

I decided he really was Travis's brother. No one was nearly as dramatic like that except for him.

Our groups split up. Almost immediately Annabeth dragged me into an empty alley. The only things around were dumpsters, garbage cans, and the occasional hobo. She pulled out her phone and pulled up the files from Athena.

"Percy look at this. _This_ is why Nyssa and Piper are missing, and Silena Beauregard is dead."

I couldn't believe it. Of all things to be willing to kill over, this wouldn't have even crossed my mind. It made complete sense, but it was so outrageously ordinary it was almost silly. Then I saw the next slide. Their real plan sank in.

"Oh gosh Annabeth. If this is right—"

Annabeth had a look of shock in her eyes. She motioned for me to shut up and I realized why she was so scared. We were closed in by the guys I had thought to be hobos against a brick wall. We had no chance of escape.

"I'm going to have to ask you to hand over those files," The supposed ringleader held out his hand to Annabeth. Then Annabeth pulled the strangest move I'd ever expected to see her do in general.

She reared back and slapped the guy across the face. "I'm going to have to ask you to shut up.! This is none of your business!"

Those few words are what started the fight.

**Oh snap, Annabeth's losing it! What on Earth is on that file? I may reveal it in the next chapter, and I may not. Muahahahaha! I don't own any of the movies mentioned, Luke Skywalker, Luke Bryan, or anything else.**

**And what? Reyna's sister is in on this? Surprise! Betcha didn't see that one coming! Who was the blonde in the air vents if Jason was fighting the blonde wedding crasher? Keep viewing to find out!**

**If you have ANY requests let me know! I love making you people happy. I've got plenty of Percabeth on the way, don't worry, but if you know anyone who writes **_**really **_**good Percabeth please leave their name with me. Love you guys!**

**R&R F&F and have a Happy New Year! **


	15. Ingenius Planning

Annabeth POV

How stupid could I be? I was in such a rush to show Percy the files from Athena that I didn't pay attention to our surroundings. _Hey I need to show you some top-secret information. Hmm, maybe I'd better drag you into a dark alley!_

And then of all things to do I had slapped the hobo. Way to make them even madder, Annabeth. I quickly began analyzing our position. What was our best bet to get out? There were about five hobos in all— all of them just as meaty and homely as the next.

We could start the job and let the French police finish it. I could say they tried to snatch my purse, or kidnap me, or something and say Percy tried to help me get out. But how would I get the attention of French police when I didn't know French? I was willing to bet the hobos didn't even know French.

Better yet Percy and I could take them out, search them, and then flag down Rachel's jet to bring them to the French HQ. But why on earth would we drag the police into our business anyway? They were definitely a help, but some of them were arrogant. They tried to be the superhero, the one that always saved the day. And it got on my last nerve.

I held up my purse as a weapon of defense. It was the best thing I had. Percy was trying to negotiate with the ringleader, and he was being ignored. I blinked a few times as something made the sun flash into my eyes. A distraction in the middle of a potential fight was very— and then I had an idea.

I held my hands up, silencing Percy and the hobos.

"Okay, I'll make you a deal. If we hand over the disc and we don't tell our agency this ever happened, will you let us go? Please?"

"No. I'm not that stupid, missy. Girls pull that all of the time. Well that isn't going to happen this time around. Not with me in charge." The biggest hobo crossed his arms.

Time for Plan A backup. I summoned every emotional thought I could to make myself cry: Dead puppies, Rue dying in the Hunger Games, breakups, Jack dying in the end of Titanic, rejection, and so much more I had nearly forgotten about. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

"Please. I'm begging you. I swear I'll give you the disc. I've got so much to do other than this. Honestly I'm new to this whole thing and I was going to get them to let me go at the end of this week. I still need to go visit my sister in her convent and tell her Dad died, and I need to collect enough food stamps just to feed my little brothers, and I've got to get to the hospital as fast as I can. My cousin is in heavy labor, and we're the only ones not there."

The ringleader nodded at me, trying and failing at looking like a gangster. "Gimme the disc."

I reached into my purse, pulled out the disc, and extended it to him. He snatched it out of my hand. I summoned even more tears: cramps, migraines, cancer, Dad re-marrying.

"I still don't think I should let you two off so easy."

"You want more? Fine. My cousin in labor also works for the agency. After giving childbirth to quintuplets she'll be so tired she can't fight back. She has more information than I do, and a backup copy of the disc, which probably has even more information on it than this one."

"Are you so sure about that? I would hate for you to be wrong and for something to happen to you."

I ignored the hobo. Time to take things to the extreme. I turned and faced Percy.

"No matter what happens I love you, Nathan."

"I love you too, Marissa."

He barely finished his words before I pulled him down into a passionate kiss. My inner girl began a timer: One, two, three, four, five… The other side of my brain screamed several different opinions at me. _I'm kissing him! It's only for work. So what? He's bound to like me! Oh gosh, how's my breath? Are my lips chapped? _

By the time we pulled away the hobos were long gone. Percy gave me an incredulous look.

"I cannot believe you gave them the disc. Please tell me there's a backup copy on your phone, or on Travis's Mac, or something."

I shrugged. "I hope those guys like Glee, because that's all that's on the disc I gave them. You better call Reyna and tell her she's pregnant with quintuplets again. I'll get the others on a lookout for the hobos."

"You, Miss Chase, are amazing."

We quickly kissed again before we got down to business. Percy called Reyna and quickly explained what had happened. Meanwhile I called Hazel, Thalia, and Will to tell them what was going on.

Hazel said that they were eliminating jewelry stores and that she could send in Katie and the Stolls. Thalia told me that she and Nico were bound to find Lacy and Mitchell within the next ten minutes. Will said no one had given the girls any trouble yet.

Percy hung up a few seconds after me. "Well, she said she had connections at the hospital who would hold off the hobos for as long as they could. And Rachel got in contact with our allies at the airport and the café."

"Perfect."

The two of us went back to the café with our redheaded ally. She came over to wait on us.

"Puis-je vous servir, monsieur? (Can I help you, sir?)"

Percy flashed her his badge, ignoring the fact that he couldn't speak French to save his life. "Yes, I believe Miss Dare told you we would be coming?"

The waitress nodded and switched languages. "_Oui_. You two had better come with me."

She spoke English, but she still had a thick French accent. We followed her into the restaurant and into a room marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Oops.

Once we were in that room she locked the door and pushed a red button, cleverly hidden next to the air vent. The wall split into two. Once the three of us had passed through, it closed again.

"We do not have much time. What is it I can assist you in?"

"Right. There's this league of hobos running around town looking for a woman about to give birth to quintuplets." The lady gave me a suspicious look. "Alias," I explained.

Percy took over. "They have a false disc because they believe important US files are on there. If by some chance they come around can you stall them as long as possible?"

"_Oui_. What are allies for? You get them."

She pushed another button and the wall opened. It led to the outside of the store. Percy and I hailed a cab and got in.

"Où aller? (Where to?)"

"English, please," I requested. The cabbie nodded.

"Of course. Where to?"

"The hospital."

The cabbie nodded and started driving. He remained silent. I kept sneaking glances at Percy. We weren't getting anywhere by riding in silence. I began wondering what it would be like to actually have a boyfriend…and then I wondered what was wrong with me. He didn't see me like that.

Then again, no one did. I was pretty enough, I guess, but I wasn't ever a knock-out. People saw me as the go-to girl. The one with the advice, the smarts, the help. Never as the one with dating potential. Why did it bother me so bad all of a sudden? I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. Eyes on the prize.

"So _Marissa_, it's kind of exciting that your cousin is giving birth! Think of it, you can be an aunt of five little ones." Percy put emphasis on the fake name. I rolled my eyes.

"Oh, but isn't it, _Nathan_? It's absolutely thrilling. Let me show you the message my aunt sent me."

I pulled out my phone and showed Percy the rest of the message from Athena. He lowered his voice.

"I can't believe this. We've lost two agents over this. It's so—"

"Frustrating?" I couldn't help but finish his sentence. Percy lightly bit on his bottom lip and nodded, staring at the screen in concentration. I looked up so I wouldn't stare and focused on our surroundings instead. I heard vibrations.

"Hey Marissa, you've got a call. Oh, it's from your cousin." Percy showed me the Caller ID on my iPhone. Sure enough it was Reyna. I answered it.

"Hello?"

"Annabeth, you're in a taxi, right?"

"Uh huh."

"Look behind you. Do you see the grey car on the left, like four cars back?"

I turned and spotted the car immediately. "Yeah."

"That's us. Now look in front of you. Black car that looks like ours."

It took me a little longer to locate that one. "Found it."

"Those are our guys. We picked up Will and Leo. We're taking a, um, shortcut to the hospital. Tail those guys and get them cuffed. Rachel's pilot is above us, along with some of the Level 8 agents. They're on standby."

"Okay. Thanks for the update. We'll go as fast as we can. Bye."

I hung up and retold the conversation for Percy.

"I'll get everyone on standby—" I looked out of the window as saw exactly how far behind the other car we were. I glanced from my phone, to Reyna's car, to Percy, and back at my phone.

"I'm putting the pilots into position. Standby isn't good enough. You make sure we catch up to that car."

Percy's green eyes widened. "Can I say it?"

It took me a minute to figure out what Percy meant. Then it hit me. I nodded. Percy held his badge up in the rearview mirror.

"Driver, follow that car!"

I couldn't help but smile as I waited on the pilots to answer my call. I had to use my walkie-talkie/bluetooth for the air call.

"Chase to Air 1, Chase to Air 1, come in Air 1."

There was slight static. A few jumbled voices crackled in my ear. Finally the line cleared.

"Air 3 to Chase, Air 1 is currently off duty. Repeat, Air 1 is off duty, Air 3 reporting for duty."

Good. I didn't really like the Air 1 pilot anyway. Dakota, the Air 3 pilot, I could deal with.

"Dakota, we're right below you in the cab. The black car is full of criminals. Think you can keep us posted on their whereabouts?"

"Ah, maybe. There's a layer of clouds coming in pretty thick."

I couldn't see anything. I looked up in hopes of spotting the black jet. Then it hit me; of course I wouldn't be able to see them. They were hiding higher than the naked eye can see.

"Okay. Air 3, when you get a chance, pull Maneuver I8J6. Repeat to Air 3, Maneuver I8J6 is of great importance. Make sure they don't get away."

"Come on Annabeth, when have I ever steered you wrong?"

"Dakota…"

"I8J6, got it. Hey, Gwen says traffic's clearing up a little bit ahead. The bad guys are picking up speed. 10-4."

"Over and out."

The taxi was slowly gaining speed, but the traffic was still bumper-to-bumper.

"Driver, take the exit," Percy said.

"Percy you have no idea—"

"Trust me, Annabeth. I know where we're going."

I was skeptical of Percy's choice in directions but I kept my mouth shut. He at least had a plan.

As we drove on I saw what he meant. We passed a blue road sign that notified that the hospital was further down the road. We passed a small gas station. I suddenly understood Percy's technique.

"Driver, you can let us out here."

"Are you sure, madame?"

"Absolutely. Merci."

I paid him and asked that he leave the premises as quickly as he could. The black car was no doubt at the hospital already. I made Percy check in with Reyna just to be safe. They were just getting out of the traffic. If they discovered that I had lied _and_ gave them Glee…bad things would happen.

There was a small street art show going on nearby. Why there was an art show in the middle of the street was a mystery to me. Several cars passed by. A blue Mercedes-Benz bulled into the gas station next to us. Out of it appeared Katie, along with both Stolls.

"Hazel found the jewelry store." Katie wasted no time sharing that with me.

That was a major relief. Across the street a familiar black car pulled into a supermarket, kind of like WalMart. It was the "hobos". They didn't look too homeless now. They had obviously freshened up to change their appearances. The license plate was the same though, and so were their beady, evil eyes.

"Oh god," I motioned for the others to duck behind our cars. All five of us ducked down and hid parallel to the tires.

"Those are some of our guys," Percy explained. He filled them in on what had happened, leaving out our personal parts.

"I have an idea, but it's a stretch," Connor announced.

"What is it?" Katie asked. Connor grinned.

"I had a feeling you would ask, dearest sister-in-law."

Katie hit Travis on the shoulder. "You told him about the incident at the mall?"

"No!" Travis replied, trying to block any other hits directed at him.

"Wait, you already did that plan?" Connor asked his brother.

"Yeah," Travis replied, "why?"

"Good! You should be plenty comfortable with doing it again in front of a bunch of people who clearly won't have any idea of what's going on."

While that conversation was going on, I cooked up a plan of my own.

"Perfect. This needs to take place preferably in the middle of that art show. Prolong some huge speech. While that happens, Connor needs to get to the hospital and alert them of what's going on. Have them go through with procedure, and make sure all civilians are in rooms and that the rooms are locked.

Percy and I will tell the hobos that there's a bomb planted in the hospital doors planted by our company. So when they don't enter the hospital looking for Reyna, who supposedly has the disc, we'll lead them to where the chopper is waiting to arrest them."

"How can you be sure they'll believe you?" Katie asked.

"We can't. That's why all of the patients, visitors, and staff at the hospital will be inside of locked rooms. If they don't believe us and they get inside of the hospital, they'll get irritated at us and chase us. We'll then lead them to the rendezvous point with the helicopter. I have Air 3 on standby."

"Alright then. This is it. We'll meet you guys at the café after that happens. Tell the others to meet us there as well," Percy instructed.

With that last word, our group of five went into action.

**Ummm….hi? *cowers behind computer* I am sooooooooo incredibly sorry I haven't updated in forever! My life has been so hectic lately! I love you guys, I am sooooooo sorry, and I promise the next update will be quicker than this one. **

**Requests? Ideas? I have a prompt for you: You know the marriage proposal distraction plan? It's a classic, but I need more plans for public distractions! Please help me!**

**Love you guys, R&R, F&F, and have a good day!**


	16. Break Out

Piper POV

I blinked a few times, my vision clouded. Where was I? I couldn't really remember anything. I quietly groaned and tried to think of what had happened. I remembered going to the jewelry store and guarding the front entrance.

All of a sudden someone attacked me. We fought for a while, and then….everything went black. It's like I had wanted to say something, to cry out for help, but I forgot how to form words. I knew if I could just say a quick 'help', then one of the boys could help me.

Wherever I was, it was dark. There were few lights, but they were bright enough to serve some purpose. I winced and clenched my eyes shut as a sharp pain took over my mind. That was the worst part of regaining consciousness.

When the pain had mostly left, I opened my eyes once again. My vision was better, but still not all there. I could see that I wasn't tied down, or handcuffed, which meant that the door was undoubtedly locked. There were no windows from what I could tell.

"Piper?" I heard a quiet whisper. I got up from my chair and turned around.

"Nyssa! Oh my god what happened to you?"

Unlike me, Nyssa had one hand cuffed to a pipe running from the ceiling. She had several bruises, a slightly blackened eye, and various cuts and scrapes. Dried blood caked her skin.

Nyssa offered me a small smile. "Fought back. My captor wasn't nearly as tolerant."

"Either that or mine was expecting the fight. You should have mostly healed after one fight."

"Who says I fought them once?"

I shook my head. "You're insane. Have you learned anything?"

Nyssa did her best to shrug. "Not really. If you can't tell, our captors aren't very lenient people. I knew they were going to meet you and the boys at the jewelry store, and very possibly take one of you hostage if needed. But there wasn't much I could do about that."

"How long have you been cuffed?"

"Um, maybe a few hours? I've lost all sense of time."

All sense of time? "Nyssa, how long have you been down here?"

"A couple of days."

Oh shoot. "Nyssa, you've been gone for about three _weeks_."

Her hazel-brown eyes grew. "No way. Three weeks?"

I nodded. "We've been out of it for a while. When I left they were on the verge of catching a few more of these guys."

Nyssa nodded. "That's good. Better than when I was still there, at least."

"Is your memory okay?"

Nyssa shrugged. "I think so. I know the basics, at least. Do you mind quizzing me?"

I smiled. "Not at all. Who's your partner?"

Nyssa rolled her eyes. "It's kind of hard to forget someone like Leo."

I couldn't help it; I laughed. It was practically _impossible_ to forget anyone anywhere near Leo's standards of crazy.

I continued our interrogation. "What are your nicknames at the office?"

"Nyss, Princess, and…." Nyssa closed her eyes, trying to focus.

"Marti," I answered. Nyssa opened her eyes and nodded, apparently remembering. "When and how do we celebrate your birthday, and why?"

"We go to WalMart. You guys buy out all of the cheap candy leftover from Valentine's, and we sneak it into the movies. We do that on the 28th. On March 1st we usually do a girl's day, and then that night we all go out to eat. We do that because I was born on Leap Day."

We continued that petty game for a while. I would bring up funny memories and stories, and Nyssa would fill in the blanks. Both of us would end up laughing so hard we could barely breathe.

"If you weren't working where you are, where would you work?"

Nyssa's question caught me off guard. I hadn't ever really thought about it before. Most people took a look at my dad and just assumed I'd follow in his footsteps. Either that or they'd assume I'd work with my (also famous) mom.

My choice to work where I worked was actually very spontaneous. I just wanted to prove I wasn't some Hollywood diva who would get by one someone else's name, like all of the other primadonnas out there.

"I don't know. I'd probably be working at a daycare, or maybe as a hospital secretary. I honestly have no idea, I've never really thought about that," I answered honestly.

"What'd you say?"

"I said I'd be a secretary, why?"

Nyssa began snapping rapidly, trying to recall something. "Curly hair, works with us—"

"Annabeth?"

Nyssa shook her head. "Brown hair."

"Katie?"

Nyssa shook her head again. "Not Katie, I remember her. She's the quiet one with the loud yell, right?"

I nodded, stifling a laugh at her description of Katie.

"I'm talking about that girl we call Coco. What's her name?"

"You mean Hazel?"

Nyssa nodded. "Yeah, Hazel. She's the secretary, right?"

"Well yeah, I'm impressed you could remember all of that after being in solitary confinement for so long, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"She's the secretary. She doesn't do much field work, if any. She has the least amount of training out of all of us. She files all of the information, hides it, sends it places, stuff like that. If the quote-unquote 'bad guys' are after some disc, why didn't they just kidnap her?"

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. "What if they already did, and she's somewhere else? Or what if they're looking for her right now?"

"Then Hazel will be down here with us eventually."

"But we don't need Hazel down here if I already called for Mitchell and Lacy to help her up there!"

"Who?" Nyssa asked.

"Two of my half-siblings on my mom's side. When we were little one of our relatives taught us all about codes and such. If anyone could help Hazel hide all of those files and keep them hidden, it would be those two. Lacy pulls off the dumb blonde look, but she's actually pretty smart."

"You called for outsider back-up?" Nyssa asked incredulously.

"No, it's different with them! We have contacts all over the world who know things. Nobody, not even Lacy and Mitchell have to know why they're getting the information, as long as they're getting it to us. We have people in Wolverhampton, Rome, Athens, Mullingar—"

"Where in the world is Mullingar?" Nyssa asked.

"I think it's in Ireland. Anyway, the point is we have people everywhere who either owe our family things or are obliged to tell what they know if they hear either of my parents' names."

Nyssa nodded, seeming semi-relieved. "What's the big deal with your parents? I'd understand if you were Rachel Dare or something, but…am I just missing out on something here?"

I sighed. I should have seen where this was going. I took a deep breath.

"Nyssa, if someone told youTristan McLean sent them to get something from you, would you hand it over?"

Nyssa's eyes bugged out. "Your dad is Tristan McLean?"

_Oh, trust me Martinez, it gets better_. "Or what if someone showed up saying Aphrodite wanted to know something—"

"And your mom is _the_ Aphrodite?"

I nodded. "So yeah, names have power where I come from. Can you promise me that will stay between the two of us, though?"

Nyssa nodded. "Believe me, I know about keeping secrets. I grew up living in the ghetto."

That I couldn't see. "You were a ghetto girl?"

"The best work Mom could get was a 5 to 9 morning shift at a La Quinta. After that she'd go work at a mechanic's shop wherever they needed her, and they'd pay her for her services. At 3:00 in the afternoon she'd report to work at In-N-Out Burger. She'd work until 1:00 in the morning, using her only break to come home and make sure I got home okay after school."

That's not the kind of thing you share with a fellow kidnapping victim unless you really trust them. Two completely different girls from two worlds that were polar opposites…and we both ended up in the same place.

We worked just as hard as each other and got the exact same pay. I found a new strength in the comfort of that thought. If only the world could see both of us now.

I heard a quiet _crack!_ and I realized I had been scraping at the wall. I held a decent sized chip out of the wall in my hand. Nyssa's eyes grew huge.

"Oh my god, I swear I was just picking at the crack in the wall."

"Let me see that." Nyssa extended her free hand. I handed it over to her. Nyssa examined it for a few minutes.

"This is really good news."

"What's really good news?" I asked.

"This! This chunk of the wall you just dug out using your _hands_. That means these walls aren't very thick. In fact, I'm willing to bet that if we dug just a little further we'd pry straight through the sheetrock. This could be our ticket out of here!"

A ticket out of our prison? It sounded too good to be true. Nyssa was still rambling to herself.

"But where does this wall lead to? If it connects to anything branching out of this beam, it would lead to somewhere near a watertower, but if it broke off when it reached that point, we'd be near the beach. And if it followed this one, and then connected into this pipe we'd be at a gas station."

Nyssa looked away from the pipes running along the low ceiling and walls.

"Piper, where would there be a beach, a gas station, a water tower…things of that sort?"

"I'd say a small town, maybe on the coast of some body of water. If we were still in New York I'd say we were near Long Island. But we could be on the Gulf of Mexico, we could be near Disneyland, or by Galveston. And that's just in the U.S."

I went to sit down, and gripped at the back of my thigh. My opponent in Queen Marie's had delivered a hard kick. My opponent in Queen Marie's…had also answered for me when Percy asked if I was doing okay. And she answered in French.

"Nyssa I think we're in France." I shared my revelation with her.

"Do you know your way around France?" Nyssa asked.

I shrugged. "Fairly well, why?"

Nyssa reared back and kicked the wall several times. When it finally gave out, part of it fell and crushed the beam she was chained to. The cuffs snapped, releasing her from the beam. She got a running start and jumped onto the wooden table, vaulting herself into the air.

Nyssa grabbed a beam that was higher up and swung herself onto it. She retrieved something shiny from a shelf I hadn't noticed before. It must have been the key to the cuffs. Nyssa uncuffed herself and dropped back down to the ground.

"C'mon, McLean, before they come back and realize we're gone."

We crawled through the opening in the wall and ran several feet, quite possibly a mile or two. We eventually slowed down.

"Where are we?" Nyssa asked.

We were in a tunnel of some sort. I could hear water running somewhere, and it was dark. I took in a deep breath—and choked.

"We are definitely in a sewer."

"Eww." I could barely see anything, but I could tell Nyssa lit up. "Come on!"

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Did you not watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles growing up? Based on the sound of the water you can tell where they'd put a ladder that leads to the city."

"They taught you that in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" I asked.

"Oh heck no, but if you watch it enough times, you can sort of tell. And I may have been in several sewers before in my lifetime."

"Oh. The only time I've ever seen a sewer was when Annabeth talked me into watching Spiderman with her."

Nyssa laughed and led me down a new path. Sure enough there was a ladder leading up to what had to be a street. And we were definitely in France; I could hear people talking.

I climbed up before Nyssa and slightly pushed the small circular lid out of the way. We were in the middle of a street, but it was closed off for…an art show? I saw an easel without an artist. There was a white coat and several paints and brushes waiting to be used. Nyssa and I crawled out of the sewer.

I showed her the easel, and the both of us hurried over to it. I slipped the white coat on over my clothes.

"I'll pretend to paint something, and you use some of the water to try and get some of that blood off of you."

Nyssa nodded and the two of us went into action. I honestly had no idea of what I was painting, only that I kept returning to the darker colors. After several minutes I realized I had been painting a thunderstorm.

"Piper, am I good?" I glanced over to Nyssa and gave her a once-over. I nodded and handed the tools and coat off to her.

"Cover for me."

I crouched down and began scrubbing some of the sewer grime off of my visible skin. I accidentally dropped the brush I was scrubbing myself with, and reached over to grab it. I got a better view of our surroundings when I did. I could see a nearby restaurant, a gas station, Travis and Katie…

I quickly got up and got Nyssa's attention. "I spy with my little eye two of our agents."

Nyssa looked over and saw them as well. She grinned. I started thinking it through: Their public job was to create distractions. That meant the rest of the crew had to be nearby. Grabbed Nyssa's arm, and the two of us made over way over to them. We ducked behind the bushes lining the sidewalk.

"Katie!" I hissed. Katie whipped her head to the side looking for my voice. "Katie! In the bushes!"

Katie glanced down. I waved up at her. Katie's eyes grew three times their normal size. She grabbed Travis and they both ducked down with us.

"What are you guys doing here?" Katie whispered.

"We just broke out of prison and ran through the sewer and ended up here. You?" Nyssa asked.

"The bad guys are at the hospital. Percy and Annabeth are keeping them busy," Travis answered.

"Then what are you two doing?" I asked.

"The hospital is just down the road. We're keeping the people here busy," Katie replied. She pointed to the pet shop across the street. "Connor's in there right now."

"Who's Connor?" Nyssa asked.

"My brother. You'll meet him when we make our getaway," Travis answered.

A Travis-look-alike walked out of the pet shop, looking around. Travis stood up. The look-alike, who I assumed was Connor, nodded at us. Katie stood up and joined Travis.

"Be right back," Katie whispered to us. The two of them walked a few feet, and then Katie stopped. She unleashed her voice.

"What do you mean you lost the snake?"

That got people moving. I saw Connor bend down and let a snake slither out of his jacket sleeve. I shuddered when I saw that.

Travis raised his hands. "Everyone calm down, it's completely harmless!"

Katie elbowed him. "No it's not you idiot!"

The French citizens seemed confused as to why Katie was yelling English jibberish. One woman screamed what must have been _SNAKE! _in French. That got everyone moving.

Connor laughed as he ran to meet up with them. The three of them got Nyssa and I, and we got into our "getaway car".

**Piper and Nyssa are okay! Yay! **

**So who caught my location reference? Point it out and I'll dedicate the next chapter to you!**

**Wey-hey Tumblr people! You want a blog dedicated to PJO, One Direction, funny pictures, quotes, and tidbits about my life? Follow me! I'm wielderofkatoptris**

**R&R F&F and live while you're young!**


	17. Distraction Crew

**You guys are awesome. I don't think you guys realize just how happy you make me. Warning: In this chapter, Katie prays. Sorry if it offends you, just skip past it. It's a small italicized paragraph. I DO NOT OWN PJO/HOO AND NEVER WILL. I ONLY OWN THE PLOT. THIS IS THE LAST DISCLAIMER I AM PUTTING BECAUSE I AM GETTING TIRED OF TYPING IT OUT.**

Katie POV

I immediately called the shotgun seat in our getaway car. Travis got into the driver's seat, and Nyssa, Piper, and Connor crammed into the backseat.

"So how exactly did you escape?" I asked as I buckled in the seat belt.

"The walls were weak. We were underneath some sort of enemy facility, probably in a basement. We picked away at the upper layer of the wall and Nyssa kicked it through. We took off. It'd be better if we could keep on the downlow for a while," Piper replied as she reached for her own seatbelt.

"So you weren't being guarded?" Connor asked, fidgeting in the tiny middle seat.

"We had stale bread and water brought to us, but other than that they left us alone. Most likely too busy being diabolical to care for or interrogate their prisoners." Nyssa answered.

"What'd they cuff you to, Nyssa?" Travis asked.

I saw Nyssa freeze for a second, and then answer, "A pipe. That's why we think we were in a basement. Well, that and the fact we ended up in a sewer."

How had he known she had been cuffed? I reached for the water bottle in the cupholder. Travis instinctively reached out to block me, but I swatted his hand away.

"Both hands on the wheel."

"But Katie Kat, that was mine!"

I rolled my eyes. Since when were we using the stupid little nicknames? "Yeah, okay. If you look on my birth certificate it does not say Katie Kat. It says—"

"Katie Elise Gardner. I know, I've heard this speech a kajillion times before." Travis interrupted me.

I shrugged. "And number two," I took a sip out of the water bottle, not bothering to waterfall it, "this bottle now has lipstick on it. So unless you want Katie cooties, it's mine."

"What's so important about the disc anyway?" Piper asked.

"That is the million dollar question," Connor replied. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

"That black car has been following us for a while," Nyssa spoke up. I looked in the rearview mirror and realized that ," Connor replied. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

"That black car has been following us for a while," Nyssa spoke up. I looked in the rearview mirror and realized that _yes_, that car _had_ been following us for a _long time_.

"There's the hospital sign, coming up on our right. We'll be fine as long as we get to the hospital before them," Connor spoke, his voice even, though I could tell it was strained.

"Try and see if yo ucan see anyone," I craned my neck, looking for myself, as I ordered the others to do so as well.

"They're too far behind us. If we could slow down a bit—" Piper began, but Connor interrupted.

"If we slow down they can catch up or pass us. It isn't worth it."

I turned around in my chair just in time to see Travis drive straight past the turn for the hospital.

"Stoll! You idiot, you just passed the turn!" I tried to keep my voice at a moderate decibel level.

"I know what I'm doing," Travis responded. Oh so now he was going all silent mode on me?

"Annabeth specifically said for us to get to the hospital." I argued.

"While she and Percy negotiated with the hobos. However, she didn't anticipate that the hobos would ditch and start tracking us."

As the black car pulled up closer I realized that it _was_ the car we'd seen the "hobos" in earlier. A sense of dread washed over me.

"Annabeth said that she and Percy would be tailing that car. Any second now they'll be here and then we'll really get an earful."

"Someone call Leo and tell him what's going on," Travis ordered.

"On it bro," Connor replied, phone already glued to his ear.

"So what are we supposed to do?" Piper asked. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. How the others did this leadership thing was beyond me. Our best bet would be for Leo to answer and stall at the hospital. And for this car to be our only car of criminals. And for Percy and Annabeth to show up with one of our aircrafts in tow. _Expect the unexpected. Prepare for the worst._

I took a deep breath and looked up to the sky. _Hey God, it's me, Katie. I could really use some help right now. Growing up everyone always said You had plans for me and would guide me, and right now I could use some of that guidance. _

"Hey, Leo says if you keep going straight and turn into the brush on the left you'll be in the ER entrance of the hospital," Connor spoke up.

Well. Thanks for the guidance. If we swung left and got to the hospital then we'd carry out our half of the deal. Sort of. But then the hobos would be at the hospital as well, and there was always the chance that Percy and Annabeth weren't tailing the hobos.

"Stoplight." I ordered.

"What?" Nyssa asked.

"Katie that's insane." Travis agreed.

"Not really. If we can get out and let the rest of them keep leading on the hobos, we'll have the chance to contact Annabeth and Hazel."

"I said it was insane, not stupid," Travis replied. I felt my face slightly flush.

"Stoplight on three. I want Piper driving to wherever her sources are, Connor shotgun, and Nyssa down in the seat. If they see one of their prisoners with us they'll start firing," Travis spoke carefully.

"One…two…three." I counted down. Travis swerved the car into the other lane. Both of us jumped out and ran through the brush. I could hear the doors shutting and the car starting up again. It would only be a matter of time before we were being chased.

"Where is that wretched ER at?" Travis snapped after about five minutes of fighting our way through trees and bushes.

"Somewhere. You think they're managing okay?" I asked.

"We can't afford to think. Just to act."

For once, I had to agree with Travis. If we stopped to think about everything we'd be dead in a heartbeat. We were trained to rely on our instincts. If Connor's reputation was really how he said it was, I could trust him. For work, at least.

Finally we ended up racing across the parking lot of the hospital. We burst through the ER doors and ran up to the desk.

"Where are they?" Travis asked. The woman behind the desk looked alarmed. I quickly showed her my badge.

"We're with the good guys. English?" I asked. The lady nodded.

"English people. Third flight."

Travis and I took off sprinting down the hall, dodging the sickly.

"Thanks!" Travis called back down the hallway as we ran. By the time we got on the elevator we were panting like dogs. I pushed the third button up. The doors closed, and it was just us two in the cart.

I risked a glance at my partner. His eyes were closed, and he was leaning against the railing along the wall. His dark brown curls were damp with sweat on top, and he was covered in scratches and bits of twigs. I was sure I didn't look much better.

"When can we tell them?" I asked. It was the question that had been prying at the back of my mind for weeks now.

"When we finish this mission." That was his breathy reply. I nodded as the doors slowly opened. The two of us bolted out and down the hall.

"Gardner! Stoll!" I heard. I stopped in my tracks and grabbed Travis's arm. I looked down a side hall and saw Leo waving at us frantically.

"You guys aren't gonna believe this—" Leo began, but I cut him off.

"Gotta…call Annabeth."

Leo's face was one of true concern. "What? Why? She and Perce have those loony tunes trapped down somewhere."

"Or so we thought," Travis replied, pulling out his phone. I got out my own phone to talk to Hazel.

"Yeah?" I heard Hazel's voice.

"Levesque, what's your status?"

"I'm staking out the jewelry store. Grace and di Angelo said they have Lacy and Mitchell and are on their way here."

_No!_ I wanted to scream. We had sent three operatives to search for Lacy and Mitchell.

"What's this jewelry store called?" I asked.

"Pluto's Paradise. Believe it or not it's actually in the mall Rachel and Reyna are shopping at."

_No. Nononono._ "Has there been any trouble?"

"Other than teeangers being idiots and the occasional screaming child? No, surprisingly. What do you want me to do?"

I thought it through really quickly. "Get ahold of Air 3. They're on standby. You get Rachel and Reyna and get far away. Rent a motel room or something. Lie extremely low. Get Frank and Jason to take over your position staking out the shop."

I paused for a minute as I realized something didn't line up. Reyna was shopping with Rachel…but she was also at the hospital. I pulled the phone away from my face.

"Valdez. Where's Reyna?"

Leo looked up from twiddling his thumbs. "We brought her back to the mall to stick with the original plan. We heard all about Annabeth's escapade in the alley. If they're looking for a Latina in heavy labor, they'll have a heck of a time finding her."

I sighed in relief, feeling suddenly grateful for Leo. Something else sunk in. "Then where's Will?"

Leo grinned. "Chatting up some of the nurses. We needed to get into some of the files, and apparently the badge wasn't enough proof."

I didn't even want to think about what that meant. I put my phone back to my face.

"But what about when Thalia, Nico, Lacy, and Mitchell show up?"

_Crap. _"Wait on them to arrive. Lacy and Mitchell can leave with you guys and help you stay off of the radar completely. If anyone tries to pull off anything at Pluto's, something tells me that between both Graces they could handle it."

"Got it. That all?"

I raced through my mental checklist. "Oh yeah! Call Connor. Wherever Lacy and Mitchell take you is the rendezvous point for them to meet up with you."

I could almost see the hesitant look on Hazel's face. "So you think between me and Connor we can keep Rachel, Mitchell, Reyna, and Lacy safe?"

"Piper and Nyssa are with Connor. Don't ask why or how, just trust me. You guys will be fine. I have to go." I hung up on Hazel, hoping she fully understood what to do.

Travis had already hung up by the time I did. "Annabeth said they're catching up to the hobos. Dakota and Gwen are still on standby with Air 3."

_Perfect_. "One of you tell Gwen to contact Hazel. Tell Hazel the rendezvous point is Air 3."

"On it," Leo replied, pulling out his own phone.

"Leo, come get a look at this!" I heard Will's voice call down the hall. Leo looked up from his phone, mid-text. I waved him off.

"I've got it. You keep texting."

I left the two boys in the small room by themselves and met up with Will at the counter.

"When'd you get here?" He asked me.

"'Bout five minutes. Talk to me."

Will slightly turned the screen to give me a better view. "Okay. So look at the names of the patients in the most critical conditions."

I took a look and I could physically feel my eyes grow larger. Prejean, Moore, Addams, Benevides, Tomlinson…all big names in certain industries. Wardrobe, transportation, oil, business, and parent's fame (respectively).

"And now take a look at what they were diagnosed with."

Arsenic. Food poisoning. Lethal injections. _Attempted murder_ _in all five cases_. I shivered.

"Look at it, Katie. Caleb Addams also had a tetrodotoxin. Angelique Prejean had a large dose of arsenic found in her lipgloss of all things. Ryan and Bailey Moore both had heavy traces of smoke and chloroform in their veins. Christian Benevides is knocking at Death's door due to blood loss that was recorded as an attempted suicide, but no other accounts could verify that he was depressed. Maddie Tomlinson is _six years old_ and she said that a nice man gave her candy at one of her daddy's press conferences. That so-called candy was enough painkillers to kill six grown men. Thank God she only got to about seven of them before her mom found her."

"So the big industries are being targeted. Their children and relatives, specifically," I replied.

"Exactly. And look at this." Will opened up a new tab. I actually gasped when I saw what it was.

Someone had reserved a room for Rachel Dare for today's date. Meaning that when the Dare's mansion was broken into, they intended on halfway killing Rachel and then bringing her here.

"I didn't know you could reserve ER rooms." My voice was barely a whisper.

"I don't think you legally can." Will agreed.

"Why isn't Caleb Addams dead though?" I asked. "If the other guy you had back in the States died from a tetrodotoxin, then why isn't Caleb dead yet?"

"I don't think they wanted any of these people dead. Just in critical conditions to scare their loved ones. As if to say 'We gave you a choice, and you refused it, so here's what's gonna happen'."

It was sick. It was a sick, twisted plot that only a truly mad person could ever dream up.

"So what's their main goal? It's like we're finding all of the pieces to the puzzle but none of them fit."

"That's why we interrogate people, gather clues, and do a whole lot of traveling. To try and make the pieces fit."

I took another deep breath. By this time part of our group should be on Air 3. The criminals should soon reailze that they are surrounded and forfeit. We had our suspetcs, victims, and a whole list of crimes that could be accounted for. But what was the motive behind it all?

That's where the disc came in. Apparently on that disc was all of the information about the criminals. We had just been playing 'Tag' with them for so long we had lost sight of what was really important. Justice.

I called Frank upon my new perception of the case.

"Yeah Katie?"

"If you find any enemy agents cuff them and put them on Air 2. They can go back to the cell with Nakamura. It's time we actually did something productive."

"Jason says that's not our best bet. He said they can send an enemy plane to come and take down Air 2, which would release the captives and make us lose more agents."

I suddenly understood what the key factor in this was. Will had been torn when Nyssa went missing. Jason was doing the same thing because _oh my God he didn't know they were okay_.

I lowered my voice. "She's okay, you know. They're with Connor right now. That whole plan Hazel was supposed to brief you on? She's in on it. They'll safely be on Air 3. She _should _be on Air 3 right now."

"Really?"

I could almost see Frank light up. I smiled at the thought. "Yeah. But don't tell Jason. And don't call to check up on them or anything. I swear you guys will be the first to know if anything happens."

"Got it. Later."

I hung up and found myself bombarded with thoughts once again. At that moments it seemed like everything would be okay. Then I heard Travis's voice ring out through the halls.

"Katie! Percy called. The hobos took the bait and they're on their way to the jewelry store!"

Okay then. Go time.

"Will, print out those documents about the critical cases, or save them to a hard drive, or something. We need those."

"Vital evidence. Got it."

"Travis and I are gonna high-tail it to the mall to see if we can help, unless we get other instructions. You keep doing what you're doing. This stuff is dynamite. Go talk to the victims and see if they know anything."

"On it, Katie."

I could hear the slight edge in his determined voice. I debated telling him Nyssa was okay or not, and then realized that she was his motivation. I decided against it.

"Stoll, come on!"

A few minutes later the two of us were jogging down the extremely long hallway again. We finally got out to the parking lot. A sudden realization made me stumble.

"Crap, Travis. We ran here. We don't have a getaway car. And even if we did, it's rush hour. We'll never get there in time."

Travis looked at me incredulously. "Katie Kitten, Katie Darling, dearest partner of mine, have you lost all faith in me?"

I looked up and saw what Travis meant; an ambulance. I could clearly see the siren sitting there. I shrugged. "Let's do this thing."

**That brings us to the end of this chapter! So it looks like everyone is headed to the mall. Let's go Thrift Shopping! ….. jk no. Please R&R F&F and request things! And for those who asked, yes, I do have more Jasper coming up. Love you guys!**


	18. Over And Under Paris

**You guys! I felt all happy when I got home and saw all of the reviews! Thank you sooooo much! Don't forget to request what you'd like to see! And yes, there is a little bit of Jasper in this chapter, and more will be coming as the story progresses!**

Thalia POV

Lacy and Mitchell seemed nice enough, from what I'd observed. I didn't really know how they were supposed to help us _at all_, but apparently everyone else thought they could be of some use. We— Nico and I— had just gotten word to take Mitchell and Lacy, meet up with Hazel, and go to some rendezvous point.

I pulled into the mall parking lot and cursed under my breath. _Of course_. It was a Saturday afternoon at a mall. Why on earth would there be any decent parking space? I drove around for a bit and then it occurred to me that I was very time-pressed.

I parked the car in a parking space right next to the mall; in other words, for expectng mothers.

"Um, I don't mean to put a damper on anything—" Mitchell began. I cut him off with one of my half-glares.

"If anyone asks I'm just not showing yet. We need to get in there, get Hazel, and get out."

That shut him up. The four of us got out of the car and entered the mall. Several thoughts entered my brain at once, most of them profane.

The mall was huge. It had two stories above where we were, on the first floor. I could see the food court from where I was—screw it, I could smell the food court from all the way across the mall. I could barely see the mini-restaurants. I was starving.

"So where's this Pluto place?" Nico asked.

"Second floor, right above where we are now. There's an escalator behind that Starbucks booth." Lacy answered.

We quickly went up the escalator and made our way toward Pluto's Paradise. Hazel was sitting on a bench about ten feet away from the store.

"Thank God you're _finally_ here! What'd you do, go out for pizza or something?"

"Let's just say that Thalia's going to be a mother," Nico replied. Hazel's eyes bugged out of her head.

"WHAT?"

I elbowed Nico harder than I should have. "I had to park in an expecting mother's spot. So sue me. Let's get out of here."

"We have to wait for the others!" Hazel argued. I _so_ wanted to argue but she was right. We couldn't leave without Rachel and Reyna, and we couldn't leave Pluto's unmonitored.

I slouched down onto the bench next to Hazel. Lacy sat down next to me, and Mitchell leaned against the railing on the side of it. Nico was pacing back and forth in front of us, muttering to himself. I rolled my eyes. I would never understand him.

Finally the girls showed up, Frank and Jason in pursuit of them. I leaped up out of my seat when I saw them.

"Enemy operative 3:00." Frank muttered to us as soon as we were in earshot. I looked over and saw what Frank meant.

"You guys got this?" Nico asked them.

"Do we have a choice?" Jason replied. Yup, he was definitely my little brother. Nico shrugged and removed his hands from his pockets. Rachel pulled out her phone.

"Air 3 is waiting for us on the roof. We need to go."

Jason waved me over. "Hey, are you gonna be okay?" He lowered his voice.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I _hated _heights. Then I thought about Annabeth and Piper, who were practically my sisters, and how much both of them were depending on me. I looked at my little brother and saw the concern in his eyes. I also saw the pain and the hope. I nodded.

I fist-bumped Jason, nodded at Frank, and then we were off. Thanks to Rachel and Lacy's guidance we made it to the roof in record-time. We took our seats on the jet and took off quickly. We couldn't afford to have anyone see more than they had to.

Once we were airborne we all got a bit more comfortable. Gwen turned her co-pilot's seat around to where she was facing us, but still in the co-pilot's position. She, like Mitchell and Hazel, had a laptop out. Hazel was showing Mitchell our program and how it worked so he could get into it and do some research of his own. Lacy, Reyna, and Rachel were deep in conversation. Nico had closed his eyes and laid his head back. I turned to talk to Gwen.

"Whatcha doin' there?"

"Tracking the rest of the operatives and their whereabouts. If they suddenly need backup, we need to know where they are, right?"

"You can track the operatives?" Reyna asked, as if the thought had never occurred to her.

"Well yeah. Someone has to know where they are," Gwen replied. She seemed troubled by something on the screen.

"What?" I asked. Gwen ignored me.

"Dakota, we're all within the same range, right?"

"Yeah, why?" Dakota asked.

"I keep losing the signal on a few of the operatives."

Losing a signal? Like, she could no longer see and assist those certain operatives? Meaning they were left at the hands of whatever situation faced them without any chance of backup?

I shuddered at the thought. Backup was critical to people like us. I refocused my attention to Hazel and Mitchell.

"I think something's wrong," Mitchell announced.

"Firewall?" Hazel asked. Mitchell shook his head.

"No, look." He tilted the screen so Hazel could get a look. Hazel frowned.

"Thalia, you're Operative 8 right?"

I nodded, and then realized that she was focused on the screen, not me. "Yeah. I'm 8."

"And you haven't given your password to anyone other than the company and Nico right?"

"Why would I? Of course I haven't. What's up?"

"An unknown source is tracking your phone. Could anyone have gotten it without you knowing?"

I shook my head. "No, and if they did it without me knowing, how would I know anyway?"

Hazel shrugged. "Good point." She looked down to her own laptop. "Whoa! Oh my— did Will message you guys?"

I checked my phone. "Nope. Why?"

Hazel handed her laptop off to me. "Take a look at this."

It was unbelievable. The Addams case, the Prejean case, both Moore cases, the Benevides case, the Tomlinson case, and what was supposed to be the Dare case were all sitting in front of me. Our criminals clearly weren't going to let anyone get in their way.

"Have the victim's families been questioned?" I asked.

"Just the Prejean and Benevides families. The Moores were most likely just at the wrong place at the wrong time, and then targeted for their wealth," Hazel answered.

"But the suspects had been trying to get ahold of the Dare's jets. If the Moores run the transportation hotspot throughout the world, don't you think they would have went to the Moores first? Once the Moores refused, they were taken out, and the Dares were put in their place."

"Then why would they have taken all of those jewels from the Dares?" Nico butted in. Sometimes he made so much sense I wanted to slap him.

"Because the Dares would have the jewels and the money to pay for the expenses and maybe they could get a jet while they were at it," Gwen spoke up.

"But why would they attack the Moores if they were just going to resort to the Dares anyway?" I asked in frustration.

"To make a point. They'll take down any obstacle no matter who put it up." Nico shared his input.

Once again I was ready to scream. How was he thinking this through so clearly?

"Okay, so they've made their point. They got to France and discovered that we were here as well. Why would they come here in the first place?" Hazel continued.

I thought about it. I thought, and thought, and thought. France, jewels, jets, missing coworkers, tetrodotoxins…all of the information was blurring together. I rubbed my temples. Why couldn't life be simple, and we could still be back in Manhattan?

Manhattan. _Of course_. That's why they were here.

"Their headquarters is here."

I saw a look of realization dawn on their faces. For once I was the smart one.

"That makes perfect sense. Their HQ is here, so why not bring your kidnapped enemies here? Speaking French at Queen Marie's was a slip up," Rachel spoke, seeming excited.

I sat back in my seat feeling satisfied. Well, mostly satisfied. I was still starving. Didn't these planes believe in packs of peanuts, or water bottles, or any type of food? At that point I was willing to eat just about anything, even carrots, and I _hated_ carrots with a passion.

Wait a minute…carrots. The gears in my head were turning. I had heard an expression before about carrots. It finally hit me: If you keep a carrot in front of a horse and a whip behind it, it'll always move forward.

We, the CSI organization, were the horse. The things we worked for— our missing coworkers, our pay, justice— were the carrot. And the whip was the fact that they were still on the loose. Still able to wreak havoc without us knowing.

So what if the whole France lead was bait? They _wanted_ the whole organization here, away from every other corner of the world, for a reason. But why? I shared my thoughts with the others.

"So now what?" Reyna asked. I shrugged and looked out of the windows. We were passing over a stretch of open field…with a cabin in the middle of nowhere? I put on my glasses and focused the lenses. Ah. A cabin in the middle of nowhere with our enemy logo on the door.

"Dakota, drop down the ladder. Keep us on standby." Nico ordered. I swear he reads me like a book. Dakota nodded and we began lowering.

"Are you sure about that?" Hazel asked, looking up from her laptop. I stuffed my glasses back into their secret compartment and unbuckled.

"I'm absolutely positive."

With that, Nico and I climbed down the rope ladder and dropped to the ground.

"How do we get in?" I asked.

"Well, we could knock on the door politely and ask if the ywould let us come in and arrest them," Nico replied. That time I actually did hit him.

"Okay, sorry. We could wait until they come out and then go in."

"But how do we know if they're even in there now?" I kicked the tree nearest to me. I braced myself for a jolt to run up my leg. It never came.

That was odd. I reared back and kicked the tree again. I heard the sound of my foot hitting it ring out. I looked at Nico and saw that he wore a grin similar to mine.

"So. A hollow tree." He walked over to where I was standing. By that time I had pried off a good portion of the bark. Together we found that the hollow tree was actually a tube that led underground.

Nico looked down it. "It angles to the right. Which, if I'm right, leads to under the cabin."

I sat down on the edge of where the grass met the bottom of the tube. I took a deep breath and pushed myself down. I was a bit of a claustrophobe, so I was pointing my toes, arching my back; all of those tips they give you at waterparks for how to go down the slide fastest.

I had barely gotten out of the tube when Nico hit the ground. We looked around at our surroundings.

"It's like a basement of some sort," I announced. Then I noticed the ruins in the corner. A beam had collapsed and made the whole wall give out. No, the beam hadn't collapsed. It had been kicked down.

"Hey Thals, look." When I turned around, Nico was holding something shiny in his hands: a busted set of handcuffs.

It was easy enough to put two and two together. Piper and/or Nyssa had been here and escaped through the hole in the wall. I took off running down the tunnel, not bothering to check if Nico was behind me. I knew he'd follow. Quite a while later we approached a fork in the tunnel.

"Which way?" Nico asked. I listened. Down the right I could faintly hear rushing water. On our left I could barely make out the shape of a ladder.

"Left."

I climbed up the ladder and pushed the ceiling out of the way. I climbed out of the hole and pulled Nico up. We were in the middle of some show. The scent of paint perfumed the air. An art show. People were rapidly packing their things up.

"Why is everyone pushing everything to the sides of the street?" I asked. It was fairly pointless though. I could hear the telltale ambulance sirens wailing, getting closer every second.

Finally it came into view. Out of habit I looked to the driver. My eyes bugged. I grabbed Nico.

"Come on!"

"Thalia now is not the time to chase down an ambulance!"

"Actually it kind of is!" When we got close enough to the back of the ambulance I pulled the back doors open. The two of us sped up and jumped in. Once we had gotten in, we pulled the doors shut, which was harder than you'd think. Considering the ambulance was going ninety miles an hour, you know.

The person in the passenger seat of the ambulance whirled her head around.

"Thalia! What the heck are you two doing here?"

"I could ask you and Stoll the same thing," I replied, taking a seat.

"We're high-tailing it to the mall," Katie answered. "But you two were supposed to be on that plane."

"We were. And then we weren't. But guess what," Nico explained.

"What?" Travis asked.

"We found a cabin in the woods that practically had a neon glowing sign: 'ENEMIES OF THE US GOVERNMENT INSIDE'. Once we were inside we found that the wall had been busted out and we found these." Nico held up the handcuffs to show Katie.

"Let me guess: then you ran through a sewer and ended up in the middle of the art show, and then heard the ambulance," Katie took the cuffs from Nico.

"Spot on. Wait. Why are you going to the mall?" I asked.

"Backup. But now I'm kind of curious about this cabin you found," Travis replied, turning down some street.

"Well so am I. We had to sneak in underground so we have no idea what's going on inside," I answered.

"Fabulous. Cut right," Katie spoke, her last directions directed at Travis.

We rode in silence for about a minute. Then I understood why Katie had told him to take a right; we looped back around to the art show. Travis parked the ambulance in the middle of the street and the four of us jumped out. I reached the sewer hole first and lifted the lid.

"Go, go, go!" I snapped my fingers with each 'go' for emphasis. One by one the three of them jumped down, and then I followed them under. The smell still made me want to retch. Instead I took a shaky breath. We were underground in a small space in the dark. Three things I hated.

"Think you can find yoru way back to the basement?" I asked Nico, since the dark had always been his thing.

"I think. Give me a minute." Nico closed his eyes and held up a hand. He ran it along the wall and took a few steps forward. "Yeah, it's this way," he confirmed.

"You got all of that from touching the wall?" Katie asked.

"And then some," Nico shrugged, which I didn't know was possible to do while running. I had long ago learned not to question it though.

After what seemed like a gazillion years later we reached a familiar point. I could see the busted wall. We ran through the enormous hole and stopped to take in the surroundings. Someone had clearly been in there since the last time we were.

"There's got to be a door that leads into here other than the hole," Nico spoke the obvious.

"Now all we need to do is find it," Travis added.

"Found it." Katie announced.

"You're lying," Travis accused.

Katie crossed her arms and walked toward the wall farthest from us. She ran her hand along the wall and then she held it still. The outline of a door popped up.

"You got all of that from touching the wall?" Nico mocked.

"And then some," Katie replied, using the same tone. Travis went to push the door open when I realized something.

"Stoll, stop!"

Travis turned to look at me, confused. I held up a hand to signal for everyone to shut up. There was a slight hum in the room that the untrained ear would suspect was the lights. But no, the outline of the door was charged with electricity.

"Hey, look," Nico motioned to a keypad on the wall. The screen read: PLEASE ENTER YOUR SIX DIGIT PASSCODE.

"That's great!" I announced sarcastically. "How on Earth are we supposed to know their passcode?"

"We aren't. That's kind of the point of a passcode," Nico replied. I hit him again.

"So now what?" Travis asked.

"We go back out through the hole, get back in the ambulance, and get onto Air 3 where we belong," I answered.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Katie cautiously spoke.

"Why not?" I asked. And then I heard it. The quiet, crescendo-ing _craaack_. Then a rumble. And then the hole collapsed. Travis and Nico flipped the desk over and the four of us crouched behind it, waiting on the flying debris to settle.

Dust went flying everywhere. Panic rose within me, but then it subsided. Surely _it _wouldn't happen. Not now of all times, after sixteen years of being at rest. Then again, that's also what they say about volcanos. I coughed a couple of times, and I heard Travis swear.

"That's fantastic," I sarcastically commented. "Now what?"

"Does anyone have anything new?" Nico asked.

"Actually, yes. Remember the victim down in our lab? He's not the only one. There are six others in critical conditions and Rachel was supposed to be among them. Various causes. But they're all either very successful and famous people, or the loved ones of successful people," Katie spoke.

"Are they all suoopsed to be dead?" Nico asked.

"From what I gathered, no. But why kill one and not the others?"

"That is the million dollar question," Travis answered.

"I thought what was on the disc was the million dollar question." Katie spoke, sliht teasing in her voice.

"For God's sake Gardner just go along with it! Remind me to never let you rob a bank with me."

"How cute; you think you're good enough to rob a bank."

"I have stealth beyond your imagination."

"Call of Duty doesn't count."

Watching them bicker was actually really funny. It lightened the mood. Suddenly Travis jumped up.

"I've got it!"

"What, rabies?" Katie taunted. Travis ignored her and began punching numbers into the keypad. We heard a click and the door slid open.

"How did you do that?" I asked. Travis shrugged.

"There were supposed to be EIGHT victims," he held up one finger, "one of them died," another finger went up, "and it's 2-0-1-3." With each number he held up another finger. "That's six digits."

**Sorry it's been sooooooooooo loooooooooooooong since my last update! Haven't gotten a chance to write in forever! But I still love you guys!**

**And for those of you on Tumblr I changed my URL to: fangirl-is-my-language **

**R&R F&F and request!**


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